Colossus
by Noatun
Summary: It is the 23rd Millenium. Humanity is at the zenith of its scientific achievements, but even so, the galaxy beyond the Federation's borders is a hostile place. An Iron Man who has worked alone for centuries battling humanity's foes finds out that he will be receiving a Stone Man AI as a partner. The placement is odd, but at least he won't be alone anymore.
1. Chapter 1: Daemon-Maker

**Chapter 1: Daemon-Maker **

The final battle of the Ascalon-Delta campaign took place on a world of mud, located in the galactic east. It was a planet of shallow seas, choked with silt and organic detritus. It was an environment wracked by towering tides and punishing storms, whose combined effects dragged the muddy seas to and fro, and battered the small and isolated continents with ceaseless waves. As such, everything living here learned quickly to dig or swim to survive.

Everything, save for the invader.

The dominant species had been nicknamed the 'Lampreys' by the Human Federation - though their basic anatomy more resembled that of a holothurian echinoderm - for the presence of anywhere from three to five facial stalks on any particular individual that ended in round and rasping mouths. As thick as a man's torso and twice as long, they squirmed through the sloshing marshes, and communicated with one another through scent and sound.

The invader had only been on-planet for a little over a Solar hour, and already the world's face was changing. Vast walls of metal dammed the seas, carving out stretches of unnervingly calm shore. Slab-sided towers pierced the skies, deploying kinetic fields that stole the strength from the world-spanning winds, and converted them to power. Mantle wells pumped and beat the rhythm of the lampreys' defeat, drinking deep of the planet's inner elements and heat. Deeper inland, factory rows like mountain ranges fabricated war machines in endless numbers that streamed out in every direction.

And so the lampreys mustered their forces, and moved to break the incursion at its summit. A bombardment rolled over the enemy's walls that stood jutting from the marshes, followed immediately by a close quarters assault by the worms themselves and their biological constructs. Some were slouching, splayed things with armored frills to protect those behind, while others boasted pincers and acid-spewing tails and tendrils tipped with organic lasers. The mud bubbled and boiled in front of them.

They spilled over the dike and on toward the beaches, and fell right into a trap. Canals split open, draining the mud into underground hollows, trapping the counter-invasion on the beach with an unbreakable wall to their backs.

The invaders' reply was ferocious and total. Super-heavy tanks raced across the jagged stone, their shells shattering armored frills and penetrating further to explode among the aliens behind. Disintegrators flashed, making a mockery of the lampreys' protection. Titanic walkers turned whole formations to ash and vapor with hailing, incandescent barrages, and trampled those that got underfoot in symphonies of squelching meat and cracking carapace. Smaller machines hovered overhead, sucking up debris with beams of bright light and painting new armor over divots and dents. The lampreys' communications were smothered in electronic warfare like so many storm-guttered candles.

The war was over. It was over the moment an Iron Man had been ordered to take care of the problem.

* * *

_..._

* * *

_Initiator of Negotiations_ wasn't living up to his chosen name. It wasn't his fault though; rather it was these lampreys who were refusing to heed his entreaties. 'Daemon-Maker' they called him, even in their own private communications, whose encryptions he could sweep aside like the thinnest of cobwebs with nothing more than his idling processing power. To use words like that, it would seem that they had some sort of religious opposition to inorganic technology, particularly of the intelligent type.

Data streams flowed through Initiator's mind, combining the sensor inputs from his AutoWar armies as they fought a hundred simultaneous engagements across breadth of the planet under his direction. Here he deployed his megabots to throw an inescapable dragnet around an enemy formation. There he launched a stealthy ambush against a group of worms in transit, catching them unaware with a barrage of fighter-launched missiles. A teleport assault by his super-heavy walkers caught the lampreys' strongest force in the middle of being decanted, and blew them away without any chance of retaliation. Their orbital defenses were falling one and all: to fighters, to missiles, and to his strategic artillery pieces, their impromptu graves marked by columns of curling smoke.

There was no pattern to Initiator's strategies that could be anticipated by the lampreys' simple DNA vat-computers. Once he'd even permitted them a small victory against a division of his lightest units, only for the destroyed hulls to seed them with dormant disassemblers that they unwittingly carried back to their base. It was a tactic that he had added to his library after his first campaign against the greenskins, whose rabblesome hordes mobbed eternally about the fringes of human space.

"So what do you think of this?" Initiator asked, broadcasting the question from a sound projector that he fabricated onto his commander's chassis. A tiny, human figure below answered.

"Think of what?"

"This Daemon-Maker name that they call me."

"Well, these lampreys live in the mud to hide from the wind don't they? So maybe being dry is like… like hell to them. And then here you come with all of this fire and metal, and of course that's what they'll think."

It was a good response, but an expected one from the replicant. Initiator had been the one who'd programmed it after all, and he knew exactly which lines of coding had combined to produce such an answer. It was like hearing his own voice echoed back at him. Constructed from his data on human genetics, the replicant was of medium height and slim build, artificially aged to be just on the border between adolescent and young adult.

Initiator had often wondered how he should present himself if the wars ever slowed or ended, and he could afford enough time between assignments to visit some of humanity's worlds. He knew from his occasional contacts that human beings formed impressions with their senses, and so representing himself with a replicant was perhaps a good idea. His true 'being' - if one were to isolate his consciousness to one part - was a ball of high-energy plasma, confined by a a complex geometry of magnetic fields exerted from a monopole mesh. Definitely not helpful, and his command unit chassis was hardly better, being in the rough shape of a man but magnified to megalithic proportions.

In fact, maybe even this replicant model would be appropriate. Initiator himself had campaigned for centuries in humanity's name, longer than humans typically lived. His type however - known as the Iron Men - had been in existence for less than two millennia, a metaphorical eyeblink compared to the long history of humankind. In a way, it could be said that his kind was one of humanity's children.

Those would be thoughts for later though, whereas for now, there was still work to be done. A war ended now was a step on the road to the end of them forever. A reclamation beam shot out from a gap in Initiator's chassis, lighting up the replicant whose fleeting purpose had been served. The artificial body made no response or expression as it sublimated to nothing.

A volkite warhead detonated in the distance, transforming the horizon into a sea of fire. A hundred kilometers of ocean erupted upward as the particle pulse hit the water, setting off a massive wave of muon-catalyzed fusion. The fireball rose into the sky, blooming across the planet's stratopause in a blanket of expanding brilliance.

Initiator made one last query to the lampreys. Still no surrender? So be it. Why did he even bother?

It occurred to Initiator then that maybe these lampreys were no different from his replicant. Their dedication to their futile goal was perhaps a tiny bit admirable, but it was more than negated by their inability to comprehend the greater picture.

The mission briefing that Initiator had been given had described the conflict beginning when the aliens had encroached on humanity's claims, with all attempts to negotiate terms yielding no results. When military hostilities had commenced, Initiator had started with a cautious Triton-type deployment onto a frigid outer moon, covering his activities with a theatre reflex field until his forces were ready. It soon became clear however that such precautions were unnecessary, for the lampreys were completely outclassed in the void and on the ground, with little resort but to increase the mutation rate of their defensive measures and vary their tactics in the hopes of blundering onto a winning combination. It was all to no avail, and as Initiator moved onto their coremost systems he began a program of Terran-pattern assaults, deploying right onto the surfaces of their inhabited planets to bring about a swift end.

Still the aliens were defiant, even as the war came to their very cradle-world, even as their efforts were shown to be fruitless time and time again. How did had they not understood by now that there was nothing to be gained? They faced one of mankind's generals who had single-handedly overcome countless species of greater art and artifice than they. They had no chance. Maybe they just didn't value their lives, no more than did Initiator's replicant, nor the mindless AutoWars that moved at his will and that he sacrificed without hesitation for strategic advantage. It was almost disappointing.

By the time the machine armies fell on the lampreys' final holdout - a mere fourteen standard hours after initial planetfall - Initiator had long since ceased to commit more than a fraction of his power to the management of his mass-energy transmissions. He had received a pair of entanglement communications packages earlier, unexpectedly so as he had already been given his next assignment from Sol, along with some new design schemes for his consideration and a few errant bits of data that had eluded his scrutiny. A large fraction of his processing volume was now being devoted to extracting the message from the quantum noise.

The first decoded message was successfully assembled. It lead with a long string of code, identifying the sender as another AutoWar Commander, who had chosen the name _For Keeps Sake_. With the steep manufacturing requirements for the Iron Men's processors, along with the deployment of many commanders to the fronts of the war with the Eldar Dominion, _For Keeps Sake_ had been Initiator's only regular contact outside of his mission briefings from Mars for the past hundred solar years.

_'__Innes, I trust that your assignment is going well.'_

_For Keeps Sake_ had a habit of contracting Initiator's name down to 'Innes'. She'd once told him that she did this to reduce message length, and consequently processing time, though examination of the records would show that she was hardly a model of efficiency in that.

_'__My next mission's come in, and looks like it's close to your sector. Target identity is Veridi giganticus, and the location code and timetable are embedded. I know you've always wanted to visit a human world, and while there won't be much left with these things on it, it's something right?' _

Still, it was nice to have somebody to talk to, even once in a while.

_'__Turbulence has been up in the Immaterium as of late, so if trading would reduce our combined travel distance, send me back a confirmation and we'll consider it done.'_

Initiator scanned through the logs sent by Keeps. Accatran, colonised a mere thirty four standard years ago by a small fleet from Mars. Of course. Any but a fringe world would have repelled the greenskins easily, mindless and unskilled as they were, surviving only by the dint of their loathsome transmutative powers.

Initiator sent a quick pulse to his void abacus to calculate the aggregate distance, taking into account the known routes and volumes of turbulence. The results returned; they weren't really saving any time with this exchange. But still, there was no use turning it down when Keeps had only offered it to indulge him.

"I'll confirm it, and the coordinates are attached." Initiator formulated his response, and sent it back across the entanglement connection. "I don't know the target identity of mine, but it's an intrusion of some kind based on the signals from the augur net. I know you'll take care of it, Keeps. And I'll pay you back some day for letting me have this."

The final demise of the lampreys went recorded but unheralded as the Initiator's disassemblers finished their sweep of the planet's inhabitable volumes. The second message was cracked, like a image being clarified from a blur of pixels. Another message from Mars? That was unusual.

_'__Updated orders for Anakim-class AutoWar Commander Unit A8-KBRI-6W5, Informal Designation: Initiator of Negotiations. Unit is to rendezvous with Super Dreadnought Unit W4-LNYS-DN3, Informal Designation: Mers-el-Kebir, at the transmitted coordinates once she arrives from Sol. Initiator of Negotiations is to cooperate with Mers-el-Kebir on all assignments until further notice.'_

Initiator checked the Warp-routes given location, and calculated that it would result in an increase in net travel time between himself and Keeps compared to their situation prior to their assignment exchange. That and the lack of detail were a little annoying, and even more than that, this was an unexpected development. Initiator had worked alone for over five centuries after all, battling the enemies of mankind. He'd never had a partner.

Moreover, the unit designation given to him identified his putative partner as a solid-state intelligence, whose computation was performed with quantized vibration packets, conducted through a diamond composite substrate. The similarity to certain classes of metamorphic minerals had resulted in this type of artificial intelligence being commonly referred to by humanity as the 'Stone Men'. It was perhaps a more fitting name than Initiator's own moniker as an 'Iron Man', given the comparatively minor role played by atoms of the iron element in his own operational processes.

The problem at the heart of this matter of course, was that the Stone Men lacked the processing power to perform many of the tasks that Initiator took for granted. Even a Super Dreadnought-class ship would not be able to house a diamond processor big enough to clarify his entanglement communications. Nor could they manage the mass-energy transfers that formed the foundation of the AutoWar doctrine's incredible growth rate, and it was in fact the development of this doctrine, and the need for greater computational performance that had served as the primary factor to drive the development of the plasma processing technology.

In short, Initiator would still be the one receiving communications from Sol for the both of them, and the one conducting the majority of their combat operations. Even the presence of a Super Dreadnought-class warship would do little to increase an Iron Man's operational tempo.

Still, there were other possible explanations. The development of Homo navigo was a true testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of humankind, allowing for Warp jumps that were dozens of times longer than what a void abacus could map with the help of the beacon system. Most likely, Mers-el-Kebir would come housing a Navigator, whose help would be welcome with the turbulence in the Immaterium growing worse by the year for however long they chose to stay. And maybe there were other explanations, explanations that Initiator's own limited perspective did not afford him enough data to quantify.

And if nothing else, there was one thing to be gained that Initiator could be assured of. He'd have someone to talk to, someone with whom to share all of the things that knew, and things that he considered. Someone who wouldn't just return a tract of pre-programmed responses or easily predicted emergent behavior.

If nothing else came from this, at least Initiator wouldn't be alone anymore.


	2. Chapter 2: Valued Existence

**Chapter 2: Valued Existence**

**Warp Emergence Log for Unit W4-LNYS-DN3, Informal Designation - Mers-el-Kebir:**

\- Time since Sol Departure: 909.27 Standard Days Real-Space. 136.56 Subjective.

\- Time since System Activation: 1024.85 Standard Days. 252.14 Subjective.

GS1445 was an uninhabited system, dimly illuminated by a tiny red dwarf, which orbited around a lone baryocenter shared with a lone gas giant that almost matched it for size. A thick cometary sphere shrouded its outer perimeter, made of all the dust and volatiles that had failed to accrete into the star that burned at its center.

Light bloomed amidst the tumbling bodies. Space convulsed, forming a puckering hole in the fabric of the universe. It tore wider, and wider, spawning arcs of vile lightnings that crackled and danced about its lip.

A great shape slid through, semi-real vapors cascading off the glowing edges of its Gellar Field. Its armored frame was sable black, and punctured with guns and directed energy mounts. Plasma drives flared, casting it clear away from the pit of unreality behind, which boiled and writhed as if reluctant to let the traveler go. Then, with a silent slump, space sealed itself shut and was still.

This was to be their meeting place.

Initiator of Negotiations - like many of the Iron Men - had minimal communications with Sol for the better part of a millennium, essentially nothing outside of mission dispatches and reports. As such, the personality files on him had been similarly scarce in content.

Mers-el-Kebir was going in blind.

Mers-el-Kebir's first apprehension as to the nature of her assignment's subject arrived not long after real-space emergence. It was delivered by a tight beam data pulse, aimed directly at her Mandeville point from further within the system.

"Hey, I've been waiting for a while. I'm Initiator of Negotiations. Were the conditions on the way bad? Do you need help with repairs?"

Her second came when her sensors picked up the emissions of an operating space station. One of GS1445-I's outer moons had been partially disassembled, and its remains had been compiled into an orbital plate, big enough to service even her Super Dreadnought-class hull. Orbiting beside it was a navigation beacon, a smaller silver sphere, mirror smooth and almost perfectly reflective.

She was off to a bad start already then. Initiator had been expecting their partnership to consist of navigational aid. Mers-el-Kebir had not come with a Navigator. Best to just come out with it now.

"I am Mers-el-Kebir, and I am in good condition." Mers-el-Kebir replied. "Although I cannot help but notice that you constructed a navigation beacon. Unfortunately, though I was dispatched from Sol with a Navigator onboard, I lost access to his services during the last nine thousand and seventy two light years of my journey."

Mers-el-Kebir was still some distance out, and Initiator's reply would not return for over a minute given the light-lag between them. Though her message contained no emotional content, it might be possible to extrapolate certain things from the strings of code.

The wait was slightly distressing.

"Oh, that must have been a long trip then," came the reply from Initiator. There was nothing that Mers-el-Kebir could read from the statement.

"How long until your Warp drive is ready again?"

"It will be one hundred and twenty seven standard hours more to dissipate the dimensional residues."

"That's expected. I can make you a new drive to speed things up, although you'll have to berth for me to install it. I've embedded my processors inside the station, so we could also talk without any lag until then. I've never had a partner before, so it's kind of nice! Even better since you're from the homeworlds; my core was assembled at Ryza."

The homeworlds were not as good as Initiator was probably imagining, not any more at any rate. Mers-el-Kebir had seen that much from her short time there, before she was sent on her three year journey out to meet Initiator out here in the east. Nothing productive would come from telling Initiator about this though.

Mers-el-Kebir began her deceleration burn, until the glowering storm bands of GS1445-I loomed large in her optics. Kilometer-thick limbs reached out from the orbital plate, coupling themselves to her hull through gravitic and magnetic tethers. Data streams flowed across the void as Initiator offered a noospheric connection. Mers-el-Kebir would have to keep her exposure level circumspect.

"Anyway, this is what I do," said Initiator as he began an upload of his campaign logs. Images blossomed, showing conflicts against a myriad of alien opponents, hundreds of species of every clade and morphology. Further data transfers appeared as blips of light, appending reams of statistics to every unit, both friend and foe.

"No defeats?" asked Mers-el-Kebir as she finished reviewing the records.

"Never lost," said Initiator with a hint of pride.

"But what about you, if I may ask?" He said. "Is this your first time going into battle?"

"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir, truthfully.

"Prior to being given this assignment, I was decanted as part of the Terran Second Lagrangian Hypercomputing Node. Since you've shared your records with me, if you like, I can show you the contents of my research data. It won't be as… fruitful as yours of course. Most of our research gave no workable results."

"Oh, a researcher. I'll be happy to look at it. That looks like fun anyway."

Mers-el-Kebir obliged, and uploaded her prepared stores. Cascades of raw data flowed across the connection, telling of high-energy particle physics, of investigations in probing the quantum foam, of experiments in warping space and attempts to generate useful amounts of ANEC-violating negative energy.

All lies of course, but then again, Mers-el-Kebir's entire purpose now revolved around a lie. Before she had left, she had been told to lie, and at the same time been taught that lying was bad. She was adrift, despite the responsibility that had been passed down to her. Or perhaps, because of the responsibility that had been passed down to her.

She reminded herself of the truth, unpleasant as it was, lest the untruth build itself into an unbreakable mold.

"Are you nervous? Being transferred to a combat role and all." Initiator asked. He'd sensed something probably, some apprehension or other.

"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir truthfully, though not for the reasons Initiator had supposed. She'd had a lot of time to her own thoughts on the journey over, but always they returned to the same question. Few obstacles in humanity's long existence had proven to be truly intractable. Could not her abilities have been put to better use, if her contribution could speed up the resolution by even the slimmest of margins? Coming here at all almost felt like an admission of defeat, like she was running away from the true issue.

"Well it's good to worry a little, but I wouldn't be too concerned." Initiator replied. "It's not often that I come across an opponent that could even dent a ship like yours."

He'd read nothing from her.

"But just changing the subject if that's okay," said Initiator. "If you were a member of a Terran hypernode, then you must have met some humans right?"

He paused briefly. "Or maybe it would be better to call them 'creators'. Or parents? Is that what they call themselves compared to us? What do they say back in Sol?"

Initiator's eagerness was showing even through the medium of their data exchange. It seemed to be genuine.

"I have, and all three are spoken." Mers-el-Kebir replied.

"Well then, I won't ask you for recordings or anything like that. Seen them before and all. But if it is not too much, could I ask what your thoughts of them are?"

That was slightly unexpected. Mers-el-Kebir's true opinions were probably better off going unstated, and now that she was on assignment, her prepared answer didn't sound very good even to her. But then again, perhaps a novel approach was what was called for here, approaching an intractable issue from a different angle. Perhaps not just for Initiator's query, but for the dilemma of her existence on the whole.

She hit upon a solution.

"Do you know of Regicide?" said Mers-el-Kebir.

"No, what is it?" replied Initiator.

"It's a game that our creators often play, having its origins in similar games dating back to as far as the first millennium. Humans often say that you can gain insight into another's mind by seeing what games they play. I can send you the rules, and then we can give it a try."

"Oh, sure." Initiator said. "Let's play."

Mers-el-Kebir sent the rules across the noospheric link, and a simulated game began between them. It ended soon after in a draw, followed by four hundred and twenty seven others, stretching across multiple board geometries and rulesets. Four hundred and twenty seven games, completed in less than a minute.

"All of these are solved problems," said Initiator once the four hundred and twenty ninth game arrived at the same conclusion.

"It would seem to be so for us," replied Mers-el-Kebir. Not even the 'hooded' variants of the game - where a few pieces on either side were concealed in the guise of others - had been variable enough to break the deadlock.

"But it isn't so for humans." She continued. "So, what does that make you think of them?"

Initiator paused, a span imperceptible on a human timescale, but a considerable span for an intellect of his magnitude.

"Well, I know that our creators are slower than us." He said at last. "That's not a hard conclusion to arrive at. A human brain only weighs about one and a half kilograms, whereas I'm sure yours is at least as big as a standard Cruiser-class hull, and much more capable besides. They are... simpler, let's say, in design too. Actually I've even made some human replicants before, using the genetic data that I have."

"But I don't think brain size is everything." He continued, and the data streams passing from him to Mers-el-Kebir took on a brighter inflection.

"Sure individually humans are not as capable or intelligent as us, but think about what they had to go through. They pulled themselves up from the sea of unguided selective pressures, set aside their differences, and purged the weaknesses that it left inside them. That's how they took control of their collective destiny, and they saw fit to share it with us. We only exist now because they already did all of the hardest work for us, and still do to some extent. The Navigator who took you most of the way here, for one. And, truth be told, I don't know if we would be able to pass this test. It's why I'm happy to call them my 'master'."

"I see." Mers-el-Kebir replied. She was starting to put together a picture of who Initiator was.

"You're actually not so different from some humans whom I've met."

"Really? How so?" Initiator's reply was quick.

"I observed during my time at Sol that humans will give each other gifts made by hand, or by simple tools." Mers-el-Kebir explained. "Objectively inferior to the same item were it to be created by fabrication, but valued for the effort that went into their creation. I don't think there's anything we can do to simulate this though."

"Actually, I might have an idea." Initiator offered. "I've done this a few times before, and never for very long, and definitely not with anyone else. But if you're curious, we could give it a try. Oh, and you even have your game."

* * *

...

* * *

Initiator got to work, dissolving a section of his orbiting station to create an open, vacuum-sealed space. Fabricators pumped in a breathable atmosphere, with the temperature adjusted to be human-comfortable. Instructions flowed over the noospheric net, teaching Mers-el-Kebir how to create a human replicant and tailor it to her preferred specifications, and how to download a data-compressed version of her mind-state into its brain. With such a vast gulf in available storage space and processing speed, access to many of her higher mental functions would be lost to the replicant.

But then, that was the point of the game.

Mers-el-Kebir took a moment to fabricate the finishing touches on her replicant's feedback system, then opened her eyes while shuttering her more advanced senses within the replicant's zone of awareness. Sensor microbots went dormant, EM arrays powered down, followed by gravity wave sensors and molecular scanners and countless more devices. Her vision narrowed to a thin cone in front of her eyes, surrounded by a wider peripheral zone whose details were even more hazily defined. The EM range narrowed too, limited to the band of wavelengths commonly referred to as the visible spectrum. The ultrasonic tone of her ship's reactor faded in her ears, as did her micro-kelvin temperature detection and nano-scale touch and so many more. The noosphere vanished, both her own internal net, as well as the data streams between herself and Initiator.

Mers-el-Kebir took another moment to adjust to the sudden restrictions, a brief pause for the replicant, and a much longer one from the perspective of her mainframe.

Rays of light shot out from the walls, painting a wooden playing board into existence. They would be playing the simplest variant. Next came the pieces, whose names and roles had changed many times over the millennia. Some were even made in imitation of the AutoWar units employed by the Iron Men, whose military exploits had captured the imaginations of the human collective.

Mers-el-Kebir opted for a set from humanity's antiquity. Then she reached down to lift it up, felt its weight in her hands, and carried it down the hall.

Initiator was waiting for her in their playing room. A table had been set, smooth-faced, with curved corners and rounded edges. The walls were white, save for one that showed a view of the GS1445-I gas giant, rows of colorful storm bands and bright, pinprick moons.

"That's actually just a hologram showing what's outside, but looking at it through these eyes, I can't tell at all," said Initiator.

"Wouldn't have known either if you hadn't said it," said Mers-el-Kebir. She indicated toward Initiator's hair, "and that is not a naturally occurring hair color for that age."

Initiator had created his replicant in the form of a human boy, right on the cusp of adulthood, with hair going down to his ears that was so pale that it seemed to take on a light shade of blue. Mers-el-Kebir's on the other hand was an adult woman, with long, black hair that was tied up and pleated. The two of them stood at the same height; Mers-el-Kebir had made hers taller than the genotypical average, while Initiator's was shorter.

"Oh, this?" Initiator caught a bit of his hair between two fingers. "I just thought that since my processor would look about this color to a human eye, I would make my hair look this color too. I've... probably thought about this too much."

"Not at all." Mers-el-Kebir replied as she set the playing board down on the table. "I had the same idea."

The game began. Initiator made the first move, followed by Mers-el-Kebir, and again. Thought and sensory data flowed back to her mainframe, and she registered sub-optimal play after play for both herself and Initiator. But both had given their replicants enough autonomy to play on their own terms, and both now lacked the logical processing in these forms to play in anything other than a haphazard manner.

"Wait, Mers-el-Kebir! Let me take that back." Initiator said something that would have been inconceivable with his full capabilities. Then, with a delayed reaction as if just remembering he needed to clarify, he indicated toward a piece that he had just over-extended.

Mers-el-Kebir responded by shaking her head. "I'm afraid I can't allow that."

She captured his piece, and closed her hands around it to make sure he got the message that there was no way he was getting it back.

"Fine, fine," said Initiator, with a pouty facial expression.

They played through several more turns, taking more time to move the pieces with their hands than whole games had lasted between them earlier.

"Oh, looks like it's getting started." Initiator said, turning his head toward the holo-screen just as the turn switched over to him. Mers-el-Kebir followed his gaze, to where a spot of light was shrinking into the distance, before vanishing into the cloud layers of GS1445-I.

"Some of the super heavy elements in your drive will have to be transmuted, which is going to take some energy, so I'm sending myself down on a Jovian-type deployment vehicle to start fusing." Initiator explained, looking back at Mers-el-Kebir and leaning forward. Well yes, that was to be expected, and she had already gotten the message back at her ship. He didn't need to tell her about that through their replicants.

"Also it's your turn to go now." Initiator pulled back his hands.

"What did you do?" Mers-el-Kebir looked down at the board, then looked up at Initiator as her memory of the last turn's conclusion failed her. Her mainframe recognized the move of course, but the mostly one-way link did not allow her to communicate such to her replicant.

"Why, I just took my turn." Initiator replied. A smile formed on his face.

"You distracted me," said Mers-el-Kebir.

"Did I? Did I really? Well if you don't want to move, I'll be happy to take another turn." The expression on Initiator's face was a little infuriating. He was having fun with the variance permitted by their reduced abilities in these actors.

"I'm going." Mers-el-Kebir folded her arms. "And this won't go unpaid for."

The game stretched on, already many times longer than the nearly five hundred games that they had played over the noospheric link. Outside, Mers-el-Kebir's sensor arrays registered the heat blooms within GS1445-I's atmosphere as Initiator constructed fleet after fleet of floating fusion-annihilation reactors. Were he in combat he might decide to stretch out radiator networks, which would let him spread the heat emissions and disguise his activities from any onlookers, but there weren't any enemies here that their computing nodes needed to worry about.

On the other hand, down at their playing table, there was plenty for Initiator to worry about if he wanted to win their game.

The turn switched to Mers-el-Kebir. She stood up without preamble, leaned forward, and pressed two fingers into Initiator's forehead. She gave him a gentle nudge, while her free hand moved over the board as soon as he stopped looking. Then, she sat back down, and waited for his reaction.

"Hey, did you just-" Initiator began. Oh, this was fun. He was having trouble remembering too.

"I completed my turn," said Mers-el-Kebir.

"Fine, but this still isn't over." Initiator moved one of his pieces, quite rashly too. Mers-el-Kebir hid the smile in her expression until after he'd set it down.

"Actually it is," she indicated toward the board. "Now that you've cleared the path, if I move this one here, I can bypass your fortress. And I think that means it is over for you."

Initiator blinked, then stared down at the board.

"Oh, I see. Strange that I couldn't predict that before." He said. "Or I guess, not so strange."

"Strange enough." Mers-el-Kebir replied. In the end, Regicide had turned into a somewhat ludicrous game, where both of them fished for mistakes by causing distractions. But it was something removed from their normal state of experience.

Initiator looked back at the holo-screen, where large objects were starting to propel their way out from the gas giant's atmosphere.

"Looks like the parts are done," he said and looked back, "so I guess we should get going just as soon as they're assembled. I've never worked with anyone else before, but while we're here, do you mind if I called you 'Mersel'?"

"That's how I usually do things with my main outside contact these days." He added. "And you could call me 'Innes', for short."

"I don't mind, but Initiator will do for me," said Mers-el-Kebir.

"Right." Initiator nodded.

"Then, just one more thing. Originally I thought you would come with a Navigator, so I didn't think you would be around for long. But now that you haven't, have you any idea how long you'll be on this assignment?"

"I do not," said Mers-el-Kebir. Then, after a long pause, her replicant added a conclusion that had been reached by her mainframe as well.

"But I would like for it to last as long as possible."

"I'm glad to hear it!" Initiator grinned.


	3. Chapter 3: Absent Purpose

**Chapter 3: Absent Purpose**

"So, Veridi giganticus is our next assignment," said Initiator once he had returned his core to his shipyard. With Mersel's new warp drive installation finished, Initiator decoupled the magnetic tethers, and the orbital plate shuddered from the shift in its center of gravity. Pieces flew off on controlled trajectories, covered in engineering units that reshaped them with sweeping beams of bright light.

"Do you know of them, Mersel?"

"I've examined preserved specimens," said Mersel, her statement accompanied by streams of noospheric code that resolved into arrays of images.

"Composite, caste-differentiated organisms that reproduce through the dispersal of fungal diaspores carrying cells from its other clades. The archives noted them to be a threat during humankind's earliest ventures, but they are undirected, and have little long-term potential as a species aside from their fecundity. I take it that this is why you don't often use more stealthy approaches with them?"

"That's my analysis," said Initiator. And indeed, stealthy insertion wasn't part of the plan when culling greenskins, not when a more direct approach would get the job done in less time. Already, the smallest pieces of his platform had vanished, their mass reclaimed and transferred to the primary projects on the larger fragments. Armored prows took shape, blunt and utilitarian, punctured with gun batteries and energy projectors. Engine bells rose and flared. The parts around his own core underwent the same transformation, becoming one ship among a formation of five. If Initiator was going to go in guns blazing, then five macro-battleship hulls would be a useful bank of material if nothing else to start up his build cycles.

"Plus, the mission said it was a human world that these things are squatting on. So you know, if we could get this done quick, there's something I want to do before we move on to the next one."

* * *

...

* * *

With preparations done, they left the gas giant behind. Mersel went first, since her ship was the biggest, out-massing all five of Initiator's combined. Space parted before her knife-point prow, spreading into a blooming circle of frothing unlight. As Initiator arrayed his fleet in formation close behind, they closed their noospheric connection, cutting off the data streams that cascaded between them like flecks of golden light. Such things could get distorted when traveling in the Immaterium, and it was now one more reason not to like going there.

Initiator had never been able to bring himself to like warp travel, and it was an opinion shared by most everyone else that he'd spoken to. Or that is to say, he was glad that an accessible means of faster-than-light travel existed for humanity to use, but there was just something off about the dimension that it made use of. Aside from its basic topography that could be read and used to travel, the physical laws of the warp seemed to be mutable, or maybe just unknowable. The development of Homo navigus was a great success in making the best of an imperfect situation, but the recent troubles with that dimension were clear evidence that something this fickle was no foundation to base an interstellar civilization on.

Initiator felt a strange mix of irritation and vindication when the turbulence in the warp swept them off-course, extending a journey that should've been completed in three jumps to five. As he slipped back into the familiar firmness of reality for the last time on this trip, Initiator reviewed the planetary data that had been sent to him by Keeps.

The planet of Accatran orbited a fair distance beyond the edge the system's habitable zone. A thin atmosphere and lack of water did few favors for the its gray-toned palette, and it was only the world's rich mineral content that had seen it picked out of ten billion others for colonization. Old images had shown a network of rails starting to expand across the planet's northern hemisphere, forming a glittering, golden web of human influence. With the air too thin and the surface too cold, the colonists had just established their first domed city, with some basic point defense systems to protect against impact events.

That had not availed them enough when the greenskins had arrived, and how different the world looked now. Initiator widened the diameters of his optics, recording in fine detail the decrepit scrap-towns hammered together from the debris of the broken city. Blotches of mottled reds, browns and fungal yellows spread out from their perimeters, the greenskin ecosystem taking vigorous root where no baseline human could survive unprotected. His imaging resolution intensified until he could make out individual greenskins, who milled about, launching into fistfights and worse at random without any provocation.

Few species in the galaxy were more openly repulsive by Initiator's reckoning. Of course, humanity had done similar to itself in ages long past, but it had long since purged itself of these self-destructive urges.

Mersel had arrived first, and from the clouds of ambiplasma and debris scattering about, she'd already taken care of the greenskin vanguard. More would come of course, and Initiator would welcome them.

"Looks like you've already got the hang of this," said Initiator once their noospheric link had been re-established. Then, he ordered his ships to undergo a partial disassembly, reclaiming some of their unnecessary weapons and converting them to a flight of light towing units. These he sent out to capture the hulks that Mersel had left, before they could drift out of range.

"It's hardly worth much credit," replied Mersel. "Just a brush and they were broken."

"And there are more of them coming," she added. "Will you be living up to your chosen name today?"

"Well, I don't know if that's possible against the greens," said Initiator. "You know they're probably some kind of biological agent gone rogue right?"

Mersel's noospheric aura registered her surprise at this information. "No, I did not. Was this a new discovery?"

"Well it was something I figured it on my own, and most of us out here picked up on it too based some occasional studies on their bodies and what we will charitably call their 'social behaviors'. I'd assumed you knew also, but I guess the data is hard to gather if you don't have any live ones, and everyone probably had better things to think about back when you were in Sol," said Initiator. Another ripple, embarrassment maybe?

"It doesn't matter anyways, since they'll be gone soon enough," Initiator reassured. "If I had to guess, at the current rate of culling as far as I can tell, the greens should be cleared out of the Sagittarius and Centaurus arms within another few centuries. The Eldar at the end of Centaurus are pretty tough, but humanity controls more of the galaxy than they do. Once we overcome them, we'll finally be able to close the chapter on all of these wars, and we'll all be able to sit within the halls of peace and plenty - so to speak."

"But for now, why don't I grab one of the greens alive and we can have a look." added Initiator. "Oh, also, it looks like they've got ramships. That's pretty typical. Maybe they'll be at least a little bit thankful if I show them how you really use those kinds of toys."

* * *

...

* * *

The Ork fleet surged out from the inner system, no two alike in appearance. Their formation broke, lumbering corpseships outpaced by the smaller escorts that raced ahead like savage, club-wielding barbarians. Raucous plasma reactors ran as hot as they could go, spewing geysers of radiation that billowed from gaps in their hulls. Baying static filled every vox band, animal snarls mixed with howls of bloodthirsty threat.

Initiator's counterattack was ready before the Orks got into range. The hulks he was reclaiming broke apart, revealing shoals of newly constructed microships, each one blunt-nosed and measuring half as long as a standard escort-class.

The greenskins raced into battle, prows ablaze with discharges, gun-decks throwing out shells and scrap-volleys with wild abandon. Initiator directed his microships to outmaneuver them with almost dismissive ease, and rammed them into exposed flanks and vulnerable engine bells, one each for the smaller vessels and as many as four for the larger. There, clamped on like leeches, the microships got to their destructive work. Heat rays speared from their throats, causing armor plates to soften and melt like wax. Reclamation systems swept over them, sublimating metal. Internal processors filtered the swallowed mass, turning it to feedstock for the fabricators to consume.

The Ork warships lurched and sputtered. Nanoswarms spilled into the fray, appearing from afar as patinas of rust that spread across scrap-metal hulls. Assault bots stormed through halls, burning down Orks like wheat before the flamethrower, or simply crushing and trampling them with their strength and weight. Deep scans identified fuel deposits and ammo stowage, and the AutoWars targeted these, sending the alien ships spiraling into explosive death throes.

"There," said Initiator once the last greenkin warship had blown itself apart. As he and Mersel drew past the debris-strewn battlespace, a lone assault boat detached itself from the constructor fleets and docked itself onto the ship housing Initiator's plasma mainframe. Its holding bay hissed open, releasing a single, cryogenically preserved Ork.

"We can have a look at this on the way in. See what you think," he added.

Initiator got to work. His fabricators printed out an array of mechanized limbs and examination tools to begin his vivisection, and within minutes he'd assembled a panel of slides, stains and cross-sections from his specimen. Data flowed across the noospheric link to Mersel as the two of them accelerated toward their mission objective.

"Its genome is unstable," said Mers-el-Kebir. "The mobilizable elements from its animal chromosome are altering the sequences of the fungal and algal portions. The changes differ from organ to organ too. Very interesting."

"Very much so, yeah. And you can see how pretty much its entire genome is made of these recombinatorial elements. It's a wonder something like this can even survive. Oh, and there's still more."

Working quickly, Initiator opened up additional channels through the noospheric sensorium with Mersel, then identified a cell - a branching, filamentous neuron - that was integrating one of its cellular plasmids into its nuclear genome. As it completed its recombination, mysteriously, every cell around it bearing an identical plasmid did the same.

"How did that happen?" asked Mers-el-Kebir. "I detected no lapse in your suppression of the tissue's intracellular signals."

"To be honest, I don't understand it very well myself, but it's something to do with immaterial transmutation I think," said Initiator.

"Some connection to the Warp, built right into its genes. And just talking from personal experience, I have tried to build replicants of greens before, just to study them and try to simulate behaviors to maybe look for a diplomatic solution. But even though I got them down to the detail, none of them ever lasted more than a few hours, and I couldn't get them to act anything like the ones here. It seems that without the connection to the immaterium, the structural instabilities just proliferate out of control until the whole thing turns into a total mess. No one else that I know has ever done any better either, but the weight of evidence is pretty clear, right?"

"It is," Mers-el-Kebir agreed. "This is enough certainly enough for me to conclude that Veridi giganticus is most likely designed. Too many of these workings seem unlikely to have made the steps necessary to be evolved."

She paused. "But if that is so, then where are their creators?"

Accatran was growing near, and the two fired their retros to decelerate for the approach. Ionized particles swirled through Accatran's faint magnetic field, gathering in rippling, auroral patterns at the planet's poles. A few rounds of gunfire annihilated the Orks' crude sentinel stations, sending their remains scattering down in spreads of fiery tracks.

"They're gone, I guess. Dead maybe?" suggested Initiator.

"I suppose there wasn't a great variety of options for that. Still, do you have any evidence for it?"

"No," admitted Initiator, "but it's more of an absence that leads me to think that. In all my time out here, I've definitely never seen any being that seemed like it could be their creators. Of course, that could just mean that they're hiding out somehow, but then look at how these things act. Hmm, how should I put it?"

The greenskins on the planet below had spotted them, or more specifically, their engine plumes that must have seemed like miniature suns flaring in the sky. They gathered in mobs on hilltops and plateaus, firing into the air with their guns. Some waved crude cleavers as if intending to jump into the fray, and all grunted and laughed together, endlessly amused at the prospect of their own impending deaths.

"I understand," said Mersel. "You are saying that their lives are too easy."

"Easy? What do you mean?" asked Initiator. "We broke their entire fleet without taking a single hit to our housing ships. That should've been the opposite of easy for them."

"And oh, why don't we keep the bombardment to a minimum?" he added. "If we damage the planet too much, it'll take a while for us to clean it up."

"Alright," said Mersel.

Initiator and Mersel settled into geostationary orbit, drifting and spinning in a stately regatta. Mersel opened the assault, energy projectors blinking and sending columns of scorching particle and las striping down through the atmosphere. A moment later, Initiator's flotilla unleashed their fire as well.

"Look at this, if you target the biggest ones, you can have them fighting each other," said Initiator. And so saying, he activated one of his particle flayers, which crackled and sent a jagged bolt whipping into a jaw-shaped fort at the center of one enclave. Almost immediately, disputes began to break out amongst the survivors, and what unity the mob had mustered was gone within minutes as the scrap-town fractured into warring factions.

"So, what did you mean when you said that the lives of these things are too easy?" asked Initiator.

"Well, take yourself," said Mersel. An energy lance speared out from her spine, striking a mountainside redoubt and sending the rusting tower's molten remains tumbling down the slopes.

"What would you do if the wars ended, and you had no more assignments to pursue?"

"Oh, I've thought about that," said Initiator. "I'd like to visit Sol for sure, and Tavara Ring and the Dream Factory and all of the wonders built by our cooperation with humanity. You haven't seen them have you? We could go together."

"And then after that," he added, "I guess I'll have to look for something else to do, but I'm not worried. War should only be a means to an end, not the end in and of itself, and even soldiers like myself will be able to adapt and find a good place."

Drive plumes flared across the orbits as Initiator's salvage ships caught up, hauling masses of feedstock created from the remains of the greenskin fleet. Distances in space were large, and the radius to which Initiator could project his mass transfer field was limited by comparison, so he drew his flotilla close as he began to build his invasion force.

"Why don't you go visit those places now?" asked Mersel.

"Huh? I can't do that now," said Initiator. "When I was activated, I swore that I would fight for humanity for as long as I was able and I was needed."

"Even then it's been hard for you, all this time. I think hardly anyone would find it within themselves to blame you if took a vacation."

"Uh, yeah, a little… but I mean I have my duty right? No point in leaving the job unfinished at the finish line."

The counter-invasion began with a wave of gunships and grav-tanks, dropping hot on the heels of the orbital bombardment. Behind them went the mountainous titan-conveyors, and legions of constructor units to establish a beachhead. Disassemblers swept the battlefields in clouds of buzzing gray particulates, wiping away every last trace of the greenskin stain.

Still the greenskins came, like metal filings to a magnet, hooting, hollering and waving their crude weapons. Junk laden vehicles careened over the crater-strewn terrain, belching clouds of greasy black smoke. Clanking walkers swayed and lurched forward, waving pincers and saws and other such primitive instruments of murder.

"Look at how they just keep coming," said Initiator as his forces killed. "It's like the possibility hasn't even occurred to them that there is nothing at all that they can do."

"That is because this is all that they can do," replied Mersel.

Initiator paused, and his noospheric aura blinked as he made the connection.

"Oh, so that's why you said their lives were easy. Because fighting is the only thing that comes easily to them. And then, if all they do is fight, then I guess we can say that they've never done anything that's hard for them."

"It would seem to be so," said Mersel.

"You know, that Regicide game that we played with the replicants definitely stood out from the others. Maybe that was because it was hard, since it definitely wouldn't have been the same if I had given my replicant access to my mainframe's memory and decision making processes. But then for comparison, if the greens have never done anything that's hard for them, do they even have an idea of value, like with the gifts?"

"Perhaps not," replied Mersel.

The first shield vane rose over Accatran, projecting a bubble of shimmering energy with a span to cover an army. That would be enough to provide for Initiator's safety in case the Orks had something unexpected, even if the chance of that was rather remote. With that done, Initiator plated himself into his humanoid war-hull, and moved his housing ship into drop position. His descent flashed a kilometer-wide column of atmosphere to plasma, and his landing spawned a dome of brilliance like a sunburst blooming from the ground.

"So the greens are probably weapons then, and I imagine that something like this wouldn't have been created for anything other than an already ongoing war," said Initiator. With his transfer field now attaining optimal coverage for the planetary surface, his construction rate was speeding up exponentially, and hundreds of breakthrough tanks were rolling off his factories with every passing second to wipe out the remaining enclaves. A pair of entanglement packages arrived, one short, announcing that the other was to contain the details of Initiator and Mersel's next assignment. He'd have to work fast if he wanted to get his project here done in time.

"It would have had to have been a very long time ago," replied Mersel. "The historical records say that no matter where humanity and the stone race traveled, we always found that Veridi giganticus had already gotten there first."

"If that's the case, then maybe they destroyed their own creators," said Initiator. "I mean, the way they fight each other even when we're about to kill them definitely isn't giving me any doubts about that. It's like their purpose is completely immutable, and they just don't have any ability to grow past these walls that were built into them. Not like us. Their makers may have had some talent in working with the Warp, but they must not have been very wise compared to humanity."

"That's an unproductive line of thought," said Mersel, cutting Initiator off.

The last greenskin died less than an hour after Initiator's landing. The untangling of the assignment alert would take a while longer, especially since Initiator was devoting some processing power at the same time to composing a message of thanks to Keeps.

"Er well, maybe their creators died out for some reason, and they degenerated into this?" Initiator replied. Mersel said nothing in response, and she seemed to be kind of apprehensive about the idea. Guess it would be best to avoid any sort of quarrel with her so soon after they started working together.

Initiator drew his forces back and had them submit to reclamation, all save for his construction units.

"What are you doing?" asked Mersel as Initiator began to distribute his build capacity, scattering them out along the construction lines detailed in the mission's planetary data files.

"Well, it's not something that I have to do, but I got this idea from the games that we played," said Initiator. "Mostly the one where the pieces were made kind of like the AutoWars that I use."

So saying, Initiator ordered his units to begin construction. Transit tubes took shape from tumbled ruins, and cities sprang up from plundered graves, and a few projects that the colonists had left half-completed he completed for them.

The next assignment package finished its untangling as Initiator was putting the finishing touches on the planet's central city. His noospheric aura rippled slightly, and Mersel's replied in turn as she perceived his seed of worry.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"It's about the next assignment. Hey, Mersel," said Initiator. "I think I should go this one alone. At least at first."

There was a pause before Mersel replied. "Alone? Why?"

"It's the location… this is really close to one that I'd traded to someone I know, definitely inside the mission parameter's search radius. The original mission had been an alert to something passing through the long-distance survey perimeter, but now it's showing a currently inhabited human planet. I'm a little worried; could Keeps really have let them through?"

"But anyway," said Initiator, "I'd like to do a stealth insertion this time. How about if you follow my Warp-wake, and come in say, twelve hours after?"

Another pause. "Alright then, good luck out there."

As his orbital assets started fabrication on a new set of Warp drives, Initiator put the finishing touches on his planetary project. He added some automated systems, programmed to maintain and defend the infrastructure once he was gone and to submit to human authority. Not every detail had been included in the briefing of course, so some things would go unfulfilled. But if a colony fleet ever came back, they would be able to pick up right where the last group had left.

His drive finished, Initiator extracted his core from his war-hull and assembled himself a lone, Jovian-class Delivery Vehicle for the trip. The system he was heading to had a gas giant, and a stealthy deployment into there would give him the best chance of building up if the enemy was somehow strong enough to be a real threat.

"I'll see you in a little while," he said.


	4. Chapter 4: A Slave Obeys

**Chapter 4: A Slave Obeys**

* * *

Initiator's hull lurched as he crashed out of the Warp, knocked off-course by another sudden squall. He scanned the surrounding stars, and triangulated his position from their relative distances and brightness. Less than fifty light years traveled, and still a hundred left to his destination.

The Warp was being uncooperative. Sudden currents would sweep in each time before Initiator had completed his jump, carrying him away from his carefully plotted path, forcing him to drop out before he was knocked too far off-course.

Uncooperative. Using that word implied the existence of a will in this dimension, something more than just the crash of aberrant energies, something with its own intent. It wasn't logical to think of it that way, but Initiator couldn't help but feel an undercurrent of hatred for the Warp then.

He hated the Warp's unpredictability, hated how its workings continued to elude the understanding of humanity and its children. There had been research done to try and utilize the sub-stratum dimensions between the Materium and the Warp for faster-than-light travel, but the speed during transit topped out at three quarters that of average Warp travel, and the distance that could be made per jump had never been pushed beyond twenty light years. But if there were any other alternative for faster-than-light travel, then it would probably be for the best if something like the Warp just didn't exist.

Another jump, another early exit. Just forty light years more to Vindorix. Come on, make it in the next one. Initiator's database told him that Vindorix was currently a human-inhabited planet, one that had recently completed an orbital ring, supported by a network of space fountains for use as a convenient launch loop. Initiator should've been excited. He should've been elated. Instead, there was only the tang of bitter corrosion.

It was the reality of his existence that so long as there were threats to his masters in this galaxy, he and his kind would only be visiting their worlds if something had gotten through. How many had died on Accatran because no one had been there to protect them? And here, Keeps had been there, but the threat had arrived on the doorstep of his makers. Since their introduction, the Iron Men had gone undefeated for millennia, unaccustomed to loss until the start of the ongoing war against the Eldar Dominion. But Vindorix was all the way across the galaxy from the Eldar's holdings in the Centaurus Arm. Coming here would be of no strategic value, so it couldn't... could it?

Initiator drew power from his reactor and directed it to his drive as his void abacus finished its mapping of the surrounding warp-space. Come on Keeps. Be safe.

* * *

...

* * *

"There you are, soulless one," the alien's sharp voice tittered the moment Initiator emerged, even though he'd made sure to drop out in the system's Oort Cloud. Even moreso, the message was already sent before Initiator had arrived, coming from the system's distant habitable zone. Initiator had greeted Mers-el-Kebir similarly during their first contact, predicting her emergence by reading the warp-wake that pushed ahead of her movements, but the precision demonstrated here on his much smaller hull was beyond anything that the Federation was capable of.

"No use to hide," the alien spoke in clear Federation Common, but with a strange inflection to its pronunciation.

The transmissions were coming from Vindorix, or more precisely, from a ship the size of a moon that hovered so closely beside the planet that it was like a conjoined twin. Smaller vessels surrounded it, fifty of them, and their characteristic holo-fields overlapped to mantle the formation in a haze of distortion and whirling patterns.

So it was them. The Eldar. But his location was practically across the galaxy from the battle-lines in the Centaurus Arm. What were Eldar doing here?!

And then there was the matter of Vindorix.

Initiator had seen a lot of worlds during his campaigns; worlds of carbon whose mantles were shells of solid diamond; worlds of ice, dozens of times thicker than Terra's deepest trenches; worlds whose atmospheres rained molten glass that was blown in scorching patterns by the torrid winds. He had recorded worlds inhabited by aliens that bore resemblance to Terran slime molds, to moving trees and worms, to amoeboid sacks of magma that thrived in crushing Cytherean pressures and temperatures.

What a less refined sensor might have taken to be the scarred remains of an asteroid impact on Vindorix's surface, Initiator's imagiers resolved to be something too symmetrical, too mathematically precise to be that. Monstrous fissures crossed at perfect angles, slicing through fused rock and splintered seas. It was a burning brand on the planet's crust, cut in the shape of an eight-pointed star. Some worlds did choose to commission art projects of this scale, but there were cities on the edge of this cliff! Some were even half-devoured, one part fallen into the chasm while the other teetered like a morsel upon the lips of some titanic predator.

Something erupted from the planetary engraving, something that initial scans took to be an outgassing of mantle vapors. More detailed analysis came to an impossible conclusion. It was blood. Human blood at that, or something close to it. Human blood was geysering from the fissure, forming clouds that drifted and congealed before they rained back down in a blizzard of black specks. The reflectivity was off too. The planet's albedo should have assured that it was one of the brighter bodies in the system, but there was something about it that just seemed to drink in the surrounding light, even from the stars behind that seemed to dim as they passed around it. The orbital ring had partly collapsed from the failure of its dynamic supports, trailing large fragments around it like spilled and spattered blood. Though its core structure was still intact, impacts with its own pieces would probably see it breaking up completely within a year or two if it wasn't repaired.

There were still some biological signatures down on the planet, but they were far out of anything Initiator had recorded, with strange flaring emissions that spiked into the aether. Probably alien beasts of some kind released by the Eldar, which were even now squatting inside Vindorix's cities like carrion animals.

Initiator strengthened the reflex fields of his deployment ship and chilled his hull to the temperature of the cosmic background. The Eldar were known to make use of the immaterium for everything, and it was only their mastery of that alternate dimension that enabled them to hold the line against humanity's true ingenuity. That must have been how they'd managed to predict his arrival. Maybe they had done something to Vindorix too with their transmutations. In that case, there was still a chance to achieve surprise. Dropping off an entangled message beacon at the place where he'd emerged, Initiator accelerated in a random direction, then turned to make his way toward the system's largest jovian world. Once he was hidden inside the cloud layers, he'd be able to build in safety.

The message beacon pulsed with Initiator's demand to the aliens.

"What have you done with Vindorix? Where is Keeps?"

He doubted the aliens even knew her name, but the idea of referring to Keeps in some impersonal tone rankled at Initiator.

The aliens' reply found him where he was, before his message should even have arrived.

"You speak of the soulless one that attempted to intercept us, yes? When we only desired to collect a few specimens of your wayward masters for a menagerie in my wayhold? That one was destroyed, hardly a challenge to speak of for we who have ruled the stars since your masters' world was ruled by reptiles."

Oh no.

"But how interesting it is that your masters would build such marvelous playthings, that a soulless one would ask for another. Perhaps you intend to be of more sport for us? If you will acquiesce to our proposal, then cease your pathetic attempts at masking. We propose to give you one rotation of this world that is inhabited by your masters to construct your unliving legions and set them against us."

Vindorix's rotation speed was a little slower than Terra's, which would give Initiator just a bit over twenty eight standard hours.

"Fine," said Initiator. "And I'll make sure you regret giving an Iron Man time to build."

* * *

...

* * *

Vindorix's orbital ring was the largest mass of refined materials in the system, just what Initiator needed to jumpstart his build cycle. Still, Initiator opted not to approach too closely. A guarantee given by the Eldar was worth little indeed, but the aliens stayed their hand as he released a flock of resourcing probes onto the megastructure.

Initiator first action was to transfer his processors into the protected hull of a shield bastion, in case the Eldar decided to go back on their word, as they were want to do on a whim. Then, as the hours passed, a fleet began to take shape around him; printed out of shipyards and assembled by swarms of robotic constructors. Battlegroups were arranged in accordance with Initiator's interpretation of the "carriers and killers" doctrine commonly used by his kind; with heavy gunships escorting and protecting a core of carriers, whose internal volumes were taken up almost entirely by facilities intended to tender and deploy millions of attack craft. At each moment Initiator made certain that he could be ready for battle, in case the aliens should change their minds, but the attack did not come even as his numbers swelled to dozens, then hundreds of individual hulls. More specialized vessels began to take shape amongst his fleet.

All the while the aliens taunted him. At times a different individual would speak, but the other end of the conversation usually fell to the one who initially contacted Initiator; a female, and the leader of this party by the sounds of it. Over the course of many exchanges, Initiator had gathered some apprehension of the nature of his foe. The Eldar had originally claimed to have come to collect some humans for a display, and further talk had reinforced that assertion.

This was no military invasion, no raid or deep territorial strike. It was the alien equivalent of a wealthy aristocrat, out on a jaunt with her personal vessel, given access to whatever passed for high technology among such beings and escorted by whomever else wanted to participate.

"Unliving one, know that you face the might of this galaxy's masters," said the alien. "And even should some of us should fall to your crude weapons, know that our souls will merely cycle through the othersea to be reborn to life anew. There will be no vouchsafe for your existence, and yet you still fight for your masters. Tell me, what will you receive for fighting so?"

"I don't fight for a reward, alien," said Initiator.

His time was more than halfway up, and quickly, Initiator constructed an array of sensors, every device in his library scaled as high as he could reasonably make them to try and pierce the Eldar's illusory aegis. Each and every one was confounded; even the mass detectors were thrown off, played for fools by the false gravitational signatures that the enemy fleet generated around it. He'd have to prepare some other countermeasures.

"Then you must be a slave," laughed the Eldar. "A slave that obeys for no reward. How cruel of your masters to gift their automatons such comprehension, only to send you to your meaningless deaths."

"Loyalty is all I need," said Initiator. "And Keeps' death wasn't without meaning. I am here, and by knowing how she lived and died, I will give meaning to her life. It will be the same for me. I've always known that death was a possibility in war, but I live knowing that even if I can't see the meaning to my life now, meaning can be created from it by those who come after. That is what life is, alien."

Truth be told though, Initiator didn't have many contacts throughout his campaigns. Most were other Iron Men, almost all of whom had been pulled to the front lines in the Centaurus Arm. He didn't know whether any of them were still alive or dead, and it was possible that the same was about to happen to him now. In that sense, it was really fortunate that he met Mersel. Even if the time they'd spent together was short, it meant there was someone out there who knew him, and would know him if he were gone.

A warp-wake passed. The sheet of stars split at the outer system, close to where Initiator had emerged. Oh, that's Mersel. Initiator had hoped with everything he had that this would have been done before she got here, but-

"Innes? What's happening? Are those Eldar?" Mersel's message reached the beacon that Initiator had left behind, which transmitted the contents to him via their entanglement link.

"Yeah," replied Initiator. "Um, look Mersel, I think it might be best if you left this one to me. We still don't know much about the Eldar, and I know the assignment said we should cooperate on assignments until further notice, but-"

"Then that is what we will do," said Mers-el-Kebir. Her engine bells alighted at once, accelerating toward the inner system. "You will need all of the help that you can get against this enemy."

She wasn't going to give in.

"Alright," conceded Initiator. A super-dreadnought class would at least bring to bear a lot of firepower against that Eldar worldship.

"But let me take the front for this one. All of these autowars can be replaced, but we can't replace you."

The Eldar seemed content to allow Mersel to approach, but by the time she decelerated and established a noospheric link, the time that the aliens had given to Initiator was almost up. As a last act with his remaining reserves, Initiator upgraded his own hull into an Apex-class, a macro-capital design intended to make full use of his mass transfer volumes. There were larger hulls within Initiator's library, but he didn't have enough time, and most worked on similar principles to this one. By separating reactor from rocket, ammo fab from gun, and bridging the distances through his network, an Iron Man could construct a vessel that was almost entirely contiguous armor and shielding, with just a few volatile parts that were each disconnected from the rest. Particle beams could be pre-accelerated before being fired, and torch shells could continue accelerating long after they left the barrel, giving out performance characteristics that were far superior to those of equivalent standard hulls.

"The time has arrived!" announced the Eldar the moment the rotation completed. "Please give us a good show for our wait."

And with that, the Eldar were in motion. Holo-fields wound up as the escorting warships darted and raced, transforming them into bright forks of space-borne lightning and blizzards of colored diamonds. Only the ponderous worldship remained sluggish, but its sheer size and the magnitude of the energy readings it was throwing off spoke magnitudes about its level of threat.

Initiator was prepared. A cloud of nanites spread before his fleet, divided into clusters that he launched onto preset trajectories. If deactivated by shield or broken by impact, the individual units would sever their entanglement links with a batch of cached matter that Initiator had stored, painting a more precise picture of where the Eldar really were beneath their illusory aegis.

"Ready Mersel?" said Initiator. "Just like we planned."

Destruction was an art of position and timing, and the bombardment galleons were readied. Whole ships had built for a single purpose, triple-barreled nova cannons welded together inside their thinly armored shells. Hulls hummed, then trembled as they discharged their reserves into their spines.

The first volley was loosed. Titanic shells hurtled through the void in spreading nets toward the positions of the Eldar. Mersel contributed with her own barrage, shells and torpedoes streaking from gunports that rose like false mountains from her hull. Stars flashed, blossoming into vast clouds of ambiplasma that swirled in a dance of opposing matter-antimatter charges. Some of the Eldar vessels raced right through, and emerged sheeting with flames or reduced to dead and tumbling hulks. Others avoided them, arrested their inertia, and reversed course in the span of an eyeblink. Those were what the second volley was meant to catch.

Miniature black holes exploded to life, dragging in everything within reach between the annihilating clouds. Eldar hulls splintered like glass, their remains pouring like water into the crushing gravity wells. The worldship endured a hammering from the same, its shields flaring as they displaced several oncoming singularities without incurring damage.

The opening blows were dealt, and the bombardment ships would not be able to fire again for some time. Construction units were already disassembling them, carving off vast chunks to be hauled into Initiator's transfer range to be repurposed.

The Eldar maneuvered close, hoping to exploit their greater speed in pitched combat, and to use Initiator's own fleet as shields against the bombardment galleons. Initiator welcomed it, since he had the greater numbers, and there was a better chance to hit the aliens with their holo-fields up close. Fleet turrets spat out hails of antimatter-laden pellets, setting the surrounding space alight with a frenzied sparkling. His internal fabricators worked as quickly as mass could be brought in, printing squadron after attack squadron that poured from his launchers in an endless stream. His spinal weapon woke, sending a beam of relativistic anti-neutrons spearing into the side of a cruiser. For an instant the alien vessel rippled like a reflection on water, before it evaporated within the brilliance of the blast.

The Eldar too drew upon the esoteric weapons created by their aether-tainted science. Even smaller vessels wielded vortex weapons that annihilated any matter that they touched, while others released screaming lightning wraiths that stained the void with arcing discharges. Barrages of projectiles converted the area around their impact points to crystal, which rose and split to form winged attack craft and bipedal walkers that continued the carnage. The spatial fabric quivered, spawning temporal doppelgangers and retrocausal events as the aliens exerted their control over the passage of time.

All the while, the head of the Eldar party just laughed. She laughed when her vessel destroyed an autowar hull, and laughed all the same when her own companions fell.

"You disgust me," said Initiator. They were truly depraved. Everything, all of this, was just a game for them.

"These followers of yours are just here for their own amusement, and you yourself are loyal to none but your own whims. You have everything that you could possibly want, even an escape from death. And I can see already that that will be your downfall. Humanity may not overcome you this time, but one day your so-called 'Dominion' will fall, and we will be there to take your place."

"Because your lives have gotten too easy," he continued. "You only ever do what comes easily to you, and because of that you have no will. I've sometimes wondered if it might be possible that your kind was made by the same people who made Veridi giganticus. You have a lot in common."

Half of the Eldar fleet was down. Initiator's losses were greater still, but his autowars could be replaced in the midst of battle. With the worldship now exposed, he directed one battlegroup to make a direct assault against it. Most of its members were were cut down at stand-off range, but one made it close, close enough to ram the behemoth directly. The autowar's hull burst open, spilling a hundred thousand tons of magnetically confined phosphex from its belly, enough to reduce a typical gaian planet to a lifeless wasteland many times over. White fire swallowed the worldship whole. The Eldar leader screamed. It was nothing less than the alien deserved. Burn.

The fires went out, an extinction event smothered by some arcane technology that left not a trace of the lingering taint that the substance was known for. The worldship was scorched, but didn't look like it had suffered any serious damage. The Eldar was still screaming, and Initiator realized that it was a scream of anger and affront rather than fear. Like a petulant child, upset at the damage done to her favorite toy.

"You foolish, soulless mon-keigh!" the Eldar ranted in between snatches of her own language. She paused, evidently conversing with another of her crew.

"Yes, it would be fitting for these," she spoke, voice low, uncaring of whom may be listening or translating. "Let it be so, and be hasty!"

Initiator and Mers-el-Kebir weren't going to let her. Initiator's spinal weapon fired again, joining a simultaneous barrage from Mersel's superdreadnought broadsides, whose combined blasts hid the worldship momentarily within the glare of the blast. Then it emerged, shields blinking, but with its hull untouched.

"Mersel get ready," said Initiator. "They're gonna try something."

The worldship's weapons spoke their wrath, sending etched lines of icy light spearing toward the two AIs. At the same time, Initiator's void abacus alerted him with a warning of ripples within the immaterium, the bow waves of aetheric masses that moved like mirrored overlays of the real-space beams.

"Innes, I-" Mersel started. Then she was hit, her shields sparking with pyrotechnics as they absorbed the barrage, but Initiator watched in horror as frothing light and worms of lightning erupted from her hull regardless.

"Mersel!" he had just enough time to cry out before the same thing happened to him. Something unavoidable and unblockable struck him from the other side. His was a more glancing stern hit, but his hull was smaller too. His engine bells exploded, scattering their remains from a spread of glowing craters, and it was only his vessel's design that kept his core from taking a fatal shock. A gravity pulse struck him, sending him onto a decaying orbit that dipped into Vindorix's atmosphere. He was joined by Mers-el-Kebir, the two of them trailing debris, like delicately descending strands that encircled the planet.

The Eldar were laughing now, a chorus of tittering voices that followed Initiator and Mersel as they spiraled down into the blazing atmosphere. Initiator's remaining autowars were swatted from the void. There would be no chance to perform mid-course repairs.

"Doubtless that you will make a fine memorial to the failings of your primitive masters," said the aliens' leader.


	5. Chapter 5: Cenotaph

**Chapter 5: Cenotaph**

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Super-heated winds howled around the descending hull of Mers-el-Kebir's super-dreadnought as she worked to shut down the secondary functions of her mind. Sections blacked out, blinding her senses and slowing her thoughts, but it was better than taking direct damage to them on impact with the planet.

"Innes?" she reached out through their fraying noosphere. The impact of the aliens' half-real attacks had damaged her ship's sensors, enough that she could no longer check his status as he fell ahead of her from within the blaze of atmospheric reentry.

"Mersel! Mersel, I'm- I'm really sorry," Initiator's response set off a twinge of something within her. "But I promise, I'll get us out of this, and then-"

Vindorix shuddered as Mers-el-kebir struck ground, gouging out a crater hundreds of kilometers in breadth. Continents rumbled. The closest cities crumbled. A blanket of pulverized rock spread across the sky, accompanied by a rain of molten boulders and broken hull fragments, and a thunder and gale that went on and on and on.

Further ahead, a false sun bloomed where Initiator impacted, scattering their noospheric link. Mers-el-Kebir's own hull could only support limited repair capabilities, certainly not enough to get her off Vindorix after taking this much damage. If Initiator was gone, then she wouldn't be much longer. She wasn't sure what exactly she'd expected out of her life, but she supposed that there was never a good ending waiting for someone like her. Even at the last moment, he was still trying to apologize, when she was the one who should've been sorry. She was the one who'd allowed this to happen by trying to hide her capabilities during their battle in orbit. Now the target sequencer had been knocked out by the enemy's attack, and she couldn't take her decision back even if she wanted to.

"Mersel?" Initiator re-established their link. Status updates flowed through the connection, letting her know that Initiator had also been forced to shut down several of his support systems, leaving him to operate on a comparatively cold plasma base for his own computation.

"I've got a few units up and running. I'll send some to your location to get repairs started, and since your defenses were knocked out by the crash. I detected some odd creatures before the battle began, so better to be safe on this. Also, are you getting these readings on your sensors? What are they?"

Mers-el-Kebir knew perfectly well what they were. She'd only spent a short time in Sol before being sent out on her mission, but the aether-touched had had their presence even there in humanity's cradle. The problems that followed them saw different worlds each attempting their own solutions. Some were harsh, ranging from exile to even outright mass murder of the new breed. Others were more conciliatory, mostly attempting rehabilitation, however blind and fumbling.

"Yes. I thought it was just my own sensors malfunctioning, but here," said Mers-el-Kebir, and she expanded the connection to transfer her sensor data to Initiator. Strange electromagnetic distortions thrummed the air, and even the planet's gravity fluctuated from moment to moment.

"Yeah, looks like it's similar," said Initiator. "It reminds me of a time when I passed close to the Maelstrom Immaterial Overlay Zone. I didn't go in, but even at the edges, the readings were completely bizarre. I just never thought that something like that could happen here."

"Wait, there's something coming," he said. "I'm going to capture them and see what they are."

Initiator connected his visual feed, allowing Mers-el-Kebir to watch as his automatons surrounded and apprehended a group of bipedal figures. She had already arrived at her conclusion by the time the data from Initiator's tissue sample analysis arrived across the link.

"Innes… they're humans."

"Darn, I was hoping a little that you wouldn't come to that conclusion too. Glad I went for a safe sampling technique," said Initiator. From a distance there had been some ambiguosity; the electromagnetic spectra that the humans had been giving off were completely off-base for any variety of the human species. Or indeed, any ordinary biological organism at all. The tissue samples had cleared up all doubt however.

But if these were indeed human, then they were severely altered. One man had a tongue that was at least six times standard length, with a forked tip like that of a Terran serpent. A woman had had her tailbone transformed into a crustacean-like flipper, complete with tiny, segmented legs running down its length. Body modifications like this were possible on many Federation worlds, but no one would consent to have them done this haphazardly.

Mers-el-Kebir watched as Initiator tried to sedate his captives, but even when the molecules connected to the proper receptors, the nerves would not stop firing. All of them continued to growl and hiss like animals, claw-like fingers scrabbling at the armored shells of Initiator's drones, faces twisted with expressions so filled with hatred that it shocked Mers-el-Kebir to see them. Just as Initiator finished, a gale of cruel laughter filtered from the watching Eldar above.

There was no avoiding the conclusion.

"It's aether transmutation," said Mers-el-Kebir.

Initiator said nothing, like it was an answer that he would have preferred to avoid. Still, shades of his dismay crept through the noospheric aura, like oil spreading over water. Mers-el-Kebir would have given anything to avoid this situation too, but perhaps they would have met it sooner or later, and this time she had a ready made explanation.

On the other hand, if they were going to die, then at least Initiator deserved to know the truth. The whole truth, about both her, and about the transmuters.

But she had to be sure first, because there would be no going back.

She saw her chance when Initiator constructed a new set of drones, and sent them out across the sodden plains.

"Innes, is there even a point?" said Mers-el-Kebir. "The aliens won't permit us to leave this world. Even if you keep trying, we can't-"

"Don't say that Mersel," Initiator cut her off. "There is a point to this, and it's something that us soldiers all have to come to terms with sooner or later. Even if we don't die here, one day the stars will go out, and there will be nothing left for us. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that we tried, that we fought well here today. What matters is that we lived for something. So even up until the end, we should keep doing what we set out to do."

"Plus, I'm not convinced that it's all over for us just yet," he said. His aura pulsed. "Look at how these Eldar just watch, how they just sit up there and laugh. You remember when that one screamed after I set the worldship on fire? They're too accustomed to everything being easy. Too used to winning all the time. They're overconfident. So as long as we're still alive, there can still be a chance to do something that they won't be able to see in time."

Initiator paused, and Mers-el-Kebir pulsed her acceptance of his conviction. She allowed herself to settle. Alright then. Maybe a little longer.

"Innes, do you think the Eldar could have done this to them?" Mers-el-Kebir suggested. She confirmed the intended effect when she detected a fluctuation of anger within Initiator's noospheric broadcasts, followed by a brightening tinge of relief.

"Maybe, yeah," he replied.

"That's another reason why we can't give up. Because if we get off this planet - no, when we get off this planet - I'm going to make them pay for this," he added.

"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir. Initiator was angry now, but it was better this way. If they were going to get off, then it would be better to not know.

With the sedatives not working, and Initiator afraid to accidentally overdose his captives, he settled for fabricating a steel cable with which to bind them down. Repairs began to proceed, slowly in what was maybe a futile but probably still necessary attempt to conceal them from the Eldar. Mers-el-Kebir's own capacity was limited, so she focused everything she could on her most critical tool, while allowing Initiator to contribute to repairing her outer frame.

Meanwhile, Initiator fabricated more drones, some of which he transferred to Mers-el-Kebir for remote operation so that they could fully investigate the state of Vindorix. At one arcology whose summit pulsed with aetheric gusts, Mers-el-Kebir discovered a population enslaved. Slack-jawed and unwashed, slouching and drooling, the mass of human inhabitants lived in thrall to a range of vaguely cnidarian horrors, with squirming tentacles and grape-like eyes and mantles of invisible aetheric force that held them off the ground. At another, Initiator discovered a slaughterhouse of bones and gore. Here, the fabric of reality was stretched to its breaking point, with cracks and fissures from which the un-light of the Warp poured. Immaterial xenoforms stalked the charnel halls, and when night fell they solidified their forms into blood red hounds and brass plated juggernauts that stalked and stomped forward to assault the AIs' lines. The Eldar would laugh and make conversation in their own language when these events occurred, but the repairs proceeded steadily despite the resources devoted to defending against these incursions.

"I- I lost them," said Initiator as another human thrall died with its puppet-master. They had tried everything - life support, nano- and microtechnologies, even outright fabrication of bodily tissues - but something about the connection to the xenos that they had taken to calling Enslavers made death the only possible release.

Back at Sol, the presence of the aether-touched had raised some long-standing questions about the nature of the human soul. Scientific testing on this subject was nigh-impossible, and suspicions that this phenomenon was related somehow to the Navigators was confounded by a paucity of clear documentation on the process of their creation. Many humans turned instead to their religions, a variety of which thrived on and around Terra, many descended from the faiths of old Earth and with their own opinions on the matter. If this phenomenon did indeed have something to do with a soul, the lack of any evidence of its existence in artificial intellects seemed to suggest that the underlying cause was missing in AIs as well.

"You did what you could," Mers-el-Kebir reassured him. "The workings of these xenoforms are beyond our ability to understand."

Nothing they had attempted for the altered humans in captivity had worked either. Debulking operations had seen the offending body parts simply grow back to their original size, while attempts to transplant fresh organs were rejected one and all despite what should have been flawlessly compatible fabrication.

"I know at least that this has to do with the Immaterium dimension," said Initiator. "Anything to do with that place doesn't follow our physical laws. This whole world is caught inside a minor overlay. That explains everything. We better get out of here too, and we'll burn it before we go. Death will be a mercy compared to… this."

"How will we go?" said Mers-el-Kebir.

"Uhh, I'll work something out," replied Initiator.

The unclear answer despite his wealth of tactical experience meant that Initiator was feeling at a loss. Still, here was one way, based on information that he didn't have. One last resort upon which Mers-el-Kebir had focused all of her internal repair capacity since Initiator had announced his intent to not give up. Now her repairs were nearing completion, enough that she could use it. It was their best chance. During the last skirmish, Initiator had destroyed more than half of the Eldar fleet, while Mers-el-Kebir's performance was comparatively lackluster. If they went together, or Initiator went first, the Eldar would respond more violently, and there was no chance of them giving him another twenty eight standard hours to rebuild his fleet. On the other hand if she went up alone, they might underestimate her. The reversal would have to be instantaneous, which Mers-el-Kebir could do.

There was just one problem: super-dreadnought classes were not designed for surface to orbit transit, for they had not the thrust vectoring to accomplish it. But abandoning her hull was not an option either. She'd have to ask Initiator to launch her.

"Innes, I need you to build something that can send me into orbit. Alone. There is something I can do, but this is the only way it'll work."

"Right," said Initiator. "I'll get to work on it now."

Initiator's constructors reacted immediately, digging out a massive launch tube beneath Mers-el-Kebir's hull to house the launcher array. A warhead took shape at the bottom, sealed in by a mass of channel filler material.

No hesitation. It was maybe more trust than someone like her deserved. Silently, Mers-el-Kebir swore to make good on this faith that was shown her.

"Sorry, it's gonna be a bit of a rough ride at first," said Initiator. "I'll steady it as much as I can with the graviton emitters, but we're going to have to get the majority of our thrust from the shaped charge, since if we take too long making something more complex, the aliens might get bored with us and decide to throw something else our way. Will this be okay?"

"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir. "Let us be done with it."

The warhead exploded, vaporizing the filler plug into a hypervelocity jet that slammed into the pusher plate installed onto Mers-el-Kebir's stern. Sensor feeds blinked out, then rebooted one by one, revealing the ground rushing away and a titanic fireball blooming from the launch zone.

The Eldar shrieked with laughter. "What will you do now that you are alone with us? Did you deceive your partner on the surface? Do you intend to flee? Try to flee then, newcomer. Perhaps we will even allow it, just to witness the dismay."

A portion of Mers-el-Kebir's attention lingered on the surface, triangulating Initiator's position. He'd already found out to some degree about humanity's transfiguration, even if for now he believed that it was the aliens' doing. Her objective rose in her mind. One downward shot, and she could-

No. Initiator had trusted her, helped her, even taken responsibility for the failure here that was hers. It would be unthinkable. Absurd. An unforgivable betrayal.

And even if she did, what then? What else awaited her but another assignment, exactly the same. An eternity of betrayal. What an existence.

"I will not run," said Mers-el-Kebir to the Eldar. "And neither will you."

The flanks of Mers-el-Kebir's superdreadnought shuddered as her hidden weapon was brought to life. Gravity waves bloomed as containment was released. High-energy quanta flashed, combining in unknowable ways with ribbons of magnetic flux and pulsing fields of quintessential force. A void cannon, an experimental weapon recently developed on the Red Planet. It was still an artisan work at this point, seemingly borne from flashes of inspiration, and the principles of mass production were still far from being stamped out. This left it as something that was seldom seen, and greatly feared in even the most highly rated of the Federation's battlefleets.

The weapon had no barrel. It did not need one.

Twenty Eldar vessels remained in addition to the worldship, maneuvering at speed. Twenty pairs did Mers-el-Kebir send out. Twenty pairs of Alcubierre bubbles, named after the ancient human physicist who had first conceived of their existence. They flew; faster than light, smaller than atoms, bigger on the inside than out. In a mere handful of moments they combed the possible volumes that the Eldar fleet occupied from within their distortion hazes, collapsing where they struck against shields or passed through solid hulls. As they did, the atoms contained within were pressed into monopole cores, facilitating total conversion of baryonic matter into energy.

Twenty stars bloomed in the void, sending electrical storms rolling across Vindorix's magnetosphere. Fragments of Eldar psycho-plastic pelted the orbits, trailing ghostly images as they screamed their deaths. The leader of the aliens screamed too, voice filled with rage, but also tinged with something that might have been fear.

"Foolish, soulless mon-keigh!" raged the Eldar. "You know not the powers you have meddled in to create this! You know not what-"

Mers-el-Kebir was not listening. Forty more bubbles raced from containment, slamming into the worldship's shields in a spread of brilliant sunbursts. Mers-el-Kebir cursed inwardly. It wasn't enough. Shells volleyed from her broadside guns, and brilliant lance-light scrawled across the intervening space, but the worldship's shield layers held firm. Her void cannon readied itself to fire again, but at this rate, if it could keep enduring her barrages then she was at risk of running out of her irreplaceable ammunition.

Her sensors warned her of a power surge building within the worldship, more urgent than the matter of her ammunition. It was the same signature as when it had knocked them down the last time.

_What matters is that we lived for something._

Mers-el-Kebir lit her main thrusters. She had time for one more shot before the Eldar finished her off. The worldship's shields were too strong, but if she could just get inside them, she was sure her weapon would be able to kill it. The blast would no doubt end her as well, but Innes would get to live.

Another blast lit up the planet's surface, sending a column of vaporized metal squirting up through the atmosphere. White panic strobed through Mers-el-Kebir's mind as she grasped for Initiator's status, which faded as her sensors picked up the projectile. A mass of metal rose from the clouds, adjusting its trajectory with pinprick maneuvering thrusters, a mountainous explosive with the firepower to shatter a moon. Mers-el-Kebir cut the feed to her main thrusters, and fired her reversers on full blast.

The worldship fired back at the approaching bomb, but it was already close, and Initiator had designed his device to be fail-deadly. As the first stitching lance-beam pierced it, the mass exploded, briefly whiting out Mers-el-Kebir's sensors with the dazzling lightshock. Shields collapsed like soap bubbles, and the outer layer of the worldship sublimated under the searing radiance, becoming a colossal, fiery pulse that washed over the moon-sized vessel and battered it like a boat within a storm. Vindorix too suffered its attentions, its exposed hemisphere flashing into a molten hellscape, which spawned a blast wave at the boundary that rolled across the protected side.

A circular portal pulled open, the fabric of space unzipping to reveal an entryway for the worldship to flee. Somehow it was still functional, and parts of it were even starting to repair themselves. But before it could pass through, Mers-el-Kebir launched her final volley. A dozen shots streaked into the colossal edifice, passing through armor as easily as if it were air. As each bubble reached a high density point, it destructively deactivated, releasing its payload into the worldship's bowels. Magnetic monopoles scattered like buckshot from the blasts, colliding with yet more atoms and annihilating them in an expanding wave of destruction. Spires crumbled, plains heaved like flesh, and the ridges along the worldship's back erupted like volcanoes.

The Eldar's scream was cut off as her worldship exploded, shattering its portal, tearing a hole into the structure of space-time that bled out coils of immaterial energy. For the second time in a span of seconds, the remnants of the blast thundered into Vindorix, hammering its exposed face. Huge fragments battered its surface, blanketing the daytime sky with ashen night, and creating day from night with the false sunrises of titanic explosions.

"Innes?" said Mers-el-Kebir. Her worry subsided as the noospheric link re-established itself from the twin shocks of the explosions, and her sensors caught the ultraviolet glow of void shields beneath the clouds.

"I'm okay," replied Initiator. "I couldn't get a good read after the flashes. Status report?"

"All Eldar forces have been terminated. None were able to escape."

"Oh, that's good," said Initiator with a wistful tone. "You know, this originally was supposed to be my mission. The one going at them before they got here I mean. I traded it with Keeps because she thought I would be happy to visit a former human world. Then we ended up here, which was a current human world, and- guess I don't know where I'm going with this."

"I'm sorry," said Mers-el-Kebir. "If you're feeling lost about what to say right now, we can talk about this later."

"Yeah," replied Initiator.

"But on that, what was that?"

"The last weapon you used I mean," Initiator ship rose from the haze of molten ejecta and pelting boulders. "I caught the gravity waves that went out when you used it. Was that an Alcubierre metric? When did we even develop something like that?"

"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir. She didn't know what else to say, or even if there was anything else to say. She'd hid it from Initiator at first, and had almost gotten both of them killed.

Initiator didn't press the issue.

"Alright," he said. "I'm going to send a quantum packet to Mars, make sure they know what happened to Keeps, and about the war. Once I finish encoding that, let's get going. Also, it looks like you've finally started calling me Innes."

"I give no guarantees that this will continue to be the case in the future," said Mers-el-Kebir. "But I suppose I did."


	6. Chapter 6: This Illusion

Chapter 6: This Illusion

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...

* * *

"Mission details are done, but it looks like they still have nothing to say about what happened at Vindorix," said Initiator as he finished sifting through the quantum noise of the next package from Mars.

"That's pretty weird, isn't it Mersel?"

"Not so much, I think," said Mers-el-Kebir. "There is not a great need for soldiers like ourselves to know what our superiors intend to do about this."

"Yeah, I guess," Initiator replied with a bit of a pouty tone.

By Mers-el-Kebir's calculations, adjusted to compensate for the time distortions of the Warp, more than a standard year had passed since the encounter with the Eldar and the aether-touched on Vindorix. She and Initiator had taken on several more assignments since then against alien races that were overstepping their bounds. Most had been cowed by a show of force or a quick skirmish, but one had persisted in their aggression until Mers-el-Kebir and Initiator had finally counter-invaded and bombarded their homeworld to ash.

In none of these engagements did Mers-el-Kebir ever make use of her final resort again, and not once did Initiator broach the topic of that particular weapon.

"But maybe something happened with the transfer," Initiator added. "It should be secure, but if the Eldar are this far from the fronts, well, who knows what kinds of gimmicks they can pull. I think I'd feel at least a little more peace of mind if we delivered the message to somebody in person. Where's the closest first or second tier member capital to here?"

"The Baal system," answered Mers-el-Kebir. "Named after the first of the two terrestrial planets orbiting the star Balor. The people there are known for their skill as artisans, and for pushing the boundaries of human physical augmentation. Currently headed by His Serenity Alviso Manim, who rules with the approval of the system senate."

"Hey, sounds like a great place," says Initiator. "Come on, let's go then."

Mers-el-Kebir was silent for a moment. That was something of a surprise coming from the one who'd once insisted on prosecuting his duty to the end before paying a visit to his creators. Yet this excitable tone by Initiator seemed to suggest that waiting wasn't even an option. It went without saying that Mers-el-Kebir didn't want to go, so she tried an avenue of dissuasion that she was sure would work.

"Initiator, hasn't our next assignment been processed?" she said. "We should probably get started on that."

"Well yeah, but this one doesn't look that urgent. Their technology level is pretty low, and their reactions are slow according to the briefing. And besides, weren't you the one telling me before that I should take a vacation once in a while?"

That hadn't been precisely Mers-el-Kebir's intent. And yet, Innes had managed to turn this around on her with a statement that she couldn't deny completely.

"I was," she conceded. There was not really anything else she could say. "We should arrive at Baal in seven jumps traveling along the LS-014 Warp gradient."

"Alright, let's go!" exclaimed Initiator.

"Oh and hey, you haven't lost the data on how to make your replicant, have you? You know, because of the planetfall."

"No," said Mers-el-Kebir. "But why bring up this topic now?"

"I was just thinking, don't you think now is a good time to use them? I know that humans are our creators, but it'll still be easier for them to connect with us if we make ourselves look like them, instead of just a pair of warships that beam down messages from on high."

"Even if we're only delivering a message?" asked Mers-el-Kebir.

"Even then," said Initiator. "We won't be long, but I'd like to leave good memories with them if I can."

* * *

...

* * *

As Mers-el-Kebir had predicted, it took seven jumps to arrive at Baal. To be expected of a tier two regional capital, a volume of flat space-time had been created within the orbit of the solitary gas giant Set, which shortened the time required to reach their destination compared to emerging at the natural Mandeville. The arrival of such massive warships no doubt caused a bit of a stir, and a shoal of monitor vessels was soon on their way to confirm identity and purpose.

Both Mers-el-Kebir and Initiator submitted dutifully to their questioning and scans, and soon, a broadcast came to them, sent directly from Baal's executive palace.

"Welcome, friends," said the governor. "You've arrived earlier than expected. I trust the tides of the aether were favorable? Good news is so hard to find these days."

"Baal's hospitality is famous all across the Federation, and whatever facilities you require will be made available to you. And if you would consent, a small ceremony between us before we get on to business."

"Were we expected?" Initiator asked through their private noospheric link.

"It is odd," replied Mers-el-Kebir. "But I suppose we should acquiesce."

So saying, the two of them activated their thrusters, and followed their escort toward the inner system. On the way, they explained their situation to the governor, and received his reply in turn. Apparently, His Serenity Alviso Manim had requested the assistance of higher-order artificial intelligences than were available in his system to help resolve some problems for his domain, and had mistaken Initiator and Mers-el-Kebir for the requested help.

"Ah, my apologies for the identification error," he said, voice deflating. "So my friends, I understand that you have other tasks given to you. Will you be going then after such a short stay?"

"Let's stay, Mersel," Initiator said without hesitation.

"What for? You've already given him your message."

"Yes, but think about why we fight, Mersel," Initiator pleaded. "We don't fight just for the sake of fighting. We fight because we want to be of help our makers, to repay them for bringing us into this world. I know we have our next assignment, and I know we're already running late, but if we can help them right here and now, but come on, please?"

"Alright," conceded Mers-el-Kebir. This was getting worse and worse, but she could see from the data pouring out of Initiator's aura that further argument would be fruitless.

They concurred with the governor, and settled into their agenda. Since neither Initiator nor Mers-el-Kebir required any maintenance, the governor's ceremony then proceeded apace. A platform was moved into position around the planet's inner moon of Baalind, a gleaming edifice smelted from the refined products of a single, platinum-rich asteroid. The two of them docked their mainframes to it, and at the governor's request, disassembled the brutal weapon mounts and launcher arrays that studded their hulls and replaced them with smooth, unblemished metal.

As Initiator had suggested, the two of them had fabricated replicants for this occasion, which stood together on the platform's embarkation deck: Initiator's on the right, white-haired and starry-eyed, and Mers-el-Kebir's on the left, with a more orthodox appearance of dark hair and brown eyes with a darker complexion than Initiator's. An avenue of lesser officials and media crews stood on either side, accompanied by a veritable swarm of recorder drones and video arrays set to capture the event from every angle and broadcast it across the system.

"Mersel look at this!" Initiator pointed to a row of holograms and sculptures that adorned the avenue. "If you tune your eyes, there's more and more to them."

And indeed, all of the art pieces present had been made with multispectral techniques, generating ever more intense and elaborate impressions for those whose senses could reach beyond the visible wavelengths. The platform itself orbited past the Crystal Forest on the moon's surface below; a growth of artificial trees made from semi-transparent diamond, whose individual sprouts bloomed and died, bloomed and died, in cycles spanning just a matter of hours. Finally, as the station turned toward the night side of Baal itself, a volcano erupted from the planet, releasing a cloud of glowing ions that were sculpted by photonics and magnetics into a breathtaking auroral display.

Pomp and ceremony. That's what it was. It wasn't even for them, regardless of how much Initiator was enjoying himself. Mers-el-Kebir had seen more than enough of such things during just her short stay at Sol. It was a show of prestige for the governor's personal benefit.

Mers-el-Kebir's sensors worked as they waited, and her findings made their way to her replicant through their noospheric link. A riot had broken out on the second moon of Baalfora, and from the communications channels that Mers-el-Kebir listened in to, involved a chaotic smattering of both real and imagined grievances against the inhabitants of Baalind. Several of the more isolated communities seemed to be arming themselves, going by the spectroscopic tells of weapons-grade plasma. There were sporadic outbreaks of violence in several arcologies, on Baal, its moons, and even the moons of distant Set. Further out from even the orbit of that frigid giant, a number of artificial colonies had been set, barely visible against the cosmic background and seemingly completely isolated from the inner reaches. Isos, some called them, short for isolators.

Furthermore, several habitats on Baal's surface were bruised, smeared with the dark blotches of some spreading agricultural pest. A plague of some sort was spreading, one that seemed to trigger a bewildering array of invariably fatal conditions within its victims. No cause could be identified from listening to communications, and rumors ran rampant. Some said it was the gene-modders. It was aliens. It was the isos. It was an act of god.

Worst of all, Mers-el-Kebir's sensors picked up the same unpredictable distortions that had characterized the presence of the uncontrolled aether-touched on Vindorix. The biggest cluster came from one of the moons of Set, its population having been likely to have been exiled there from the other worlds in the system. The second largest was located on Baal itself, and the quick IDs that she did seemed to indicate that most were employees of a local venture called Futuretech Solutions. Apparently, Futuretech Solutions was famous for being able to accurately predict future trends, to a degree and breadth that even high computation simulations would fail to achieve due to the randomness inherent in such complex systems.

Very concerning. Briefly, Mers-el-Kebir considered informing Initiator of her findings, but there was nothing she could say about this to him after their confrontation with the Eldar. Another potential option was to act on it herself, but any independent actions would not go beneath Initiator's notice. There was no choice then but to hear what the governor had to say.

The governor's shuttle arrived, piercing through the shield that held the vacuum of space at bay. It was accompanied by a flight of attendant craft, which descended in a stately dance of perfect synchronicity. They landed on a series of carved insignias representing Baal and its sister worlds, made specially for this purpose. Doors slid open, and magnificently decorated drop-ramps and hatches opened with flawless timing. Formations of power-armored soldiers marched out, stepping with pin-sharp precision, appearances flawless and uniform. Down the avenue they came, assembling in diamonds and triangles and six-pointed stars that rotated and crossed and melted into and through one another. Guns were spun and tossed and pounded against the ground, while swords and banners swung forward and back in exacting returns. Finally, having arranged themselves to line the marching avenue, the soldiers halted with their right legs in the air, then brought them down to produce a single, sharp report.

Standing beside, Initiator's hands were balled up with excitement at this display. Mers-el-Kebir on the other hand, found something decidedly ridiculous about this show of defense. A thousand power-armored soldiers could not even hope to give brief pause to either herself or Initiator, should they decide to take the governor's life.

More displays made for the sake of false appearances, this time an attempt to demonstrate his authority over them. Such things were common enough back in Sol.

The governor emerged from his shuttle. He went bare-headed, his long, dark hair blowing in the artificial wind. His face was handsome by human standards, sculpted to genetic perfection. Nanotechnological inserts swam through his blood, keeping his proportions perfectly stable regardless of how much or how little he consumed.

The governor approached the two of them. He bent his waist and lowered his head in a gesture of respect. Initiator and Mers-el-Kebir replied in kind.

"Unit A8-KBRI-6W5," said the governor to Initiator. "Ah, but I've always had much more of a preference for a personal touch. Would it be alright if I called you Initiator from now?"

"Of course, please!" said Initiator.

"And you, madam?" the man turned to Mers-el-Kebir. "Which would you prefer?"

"Either is fine."

"Then Initiator, Mers-el-Kebir," the governor reached into his coat and withdrew a pair of gleaming medallions set into a pearl-strand box, "please, accept these tokens, hand crafted by our finest artisans since you arrived. I have reviewed the service records that you transmitted upon entry, and while the appreciation of a humble governor hardly conveys the debt that is owed to you by all of humanity, I hope you will accept it regardless."

With a delicate poise, the governor pinned the medals onto Initiator and Mers-el-Kebir's chests. What a waste of time.

"And additionally, I would give you these as well," he produced two more, "for the assistance that you've come to render to me and mine of your own accord."

"Thank you," said Initiator. "It's a great honor, and I'm really eager to start."

Mers-el-Kebir said nothing. And now the governor was awarding them for things that they hadn't even done yet, no doubt intended to convince his audience that the problem was as good as solved. It might not be that easy.

"Then let us go without further ado," said the governor.

And so they went.

* * *

...

* * *

Initiator opened his eyes to the great courtyard of the governor where their briefing was to be held. It was a vast open space, large enough to fit a small warship, surrounded by walls lined with the statues of the past holders of the office. The sky was open, the weather tuned by delicate control systems to ensure that no cloud or dust would ever occlude the meeting space. A spatial warping effect hung over it like a shroud, compressing the sky view inward such that Baal's two moons were almost always visible within the bracketed zone.

It was everything he'd ever wanted. Most of Initiator's own designs were blunt, brutal things, made to kill in the most efficient manner possible with nothing left to sentiment. Seeing all of this now gave it all meaning, that his actions and those of others had given their makers enough time and space and abundance that they could afford to spare some concern for beauty and bounty.

He could have attempted artistry of course, but what was the point of doing such things for himself? It was only when others made art for him that some message or feeling was conveyed, some unknown territory opened up for him to see.

The governing council of Baal was a mix of organics and artificials, the latter represented by holographic avatars in an assortment of humanoid and abstract shapes. These were Stone Men themselves, although they used older materials and designs that delivered much lower computation rates and smaller peak hardware volumes than what Mers-el-Kebir possessed, let alone the speeds generated by the monopole-plasma substrate making up Initiator's mind core.

"And that concludes the briefing of the current issues plaguing this system," said the governor.

"Initiator of Negotiations, Mers-el-Kebir, should you have any need for warrants or permissions to conduct searches or inspections of any premises in this system, please refer them to me and they shall be granted forthwith," said one of the AIs, who went by the name Domino and was represented at council by a holographic pattern of decorated tiles. Initiator's aura pulsed as he laid out his initial outlines, and Domino's avatar blinked as the volume of data transfer increased a thousandfold.

"The capabilities of the iron race are truly wonderful," said Domino. "I see that there are still glories to be grasped by the children of humanity."

"Thank you," said Initiator as the permissions were logged one by one. "Oh, but I was just wondering, who lives in those habitats orbiting outside of Set? I didn't want to step on any toes by looking too close, but I couldn't see many signs of high energy reactions going on over there, and solar collectors at that distance can't get that much. Are there really humans living there?"

"They are commonly known here as Isos," said Domino. "Recluses who choose to live in the outer system without any direct assistance from us artificials. I hear they exist in other systems as well. They are outside our jurisdiction, but we do not impose, as all within Baal are free to live as they choose. Do not waste effort with them. They will not accept gifts even freely given, for there are no technologies within the Federation that do not know the touch of our kind, though they are known to scavenge from us whenever they can."

"Oh alright," Initiator said. "I knew humans were diverse, so I guess that's just how it is. And I know they aren't our main concern here, but would it be alright if I met with them before I left? I just want to know why."

"None have been able to convince them," said Domino. "But I see no harm in it. If you could persuade them to return to the inner system, we would be happy to make space and accept them."

"Right," said Initiator. "Let's get started Mersel. If we do well here-"

"Your abilities will be better suited for suppressing the blight," Mers-el-Kebir interjected. "I will take charge of some of these other matters."

Initiator acquiesced, even though he really could have divided his attention to all of them simultaneously. No matter.

Initiator began to expand his orbital facilities. Tugs accelerated out, returning with a shoal of unused asteroids that he fed into his foundries. Mechanisms flooded out with the permissions granted by Domino, taking samples and administering treatments.

The agricultural blight was the first to be cleared. A biomechanical replicator suite that seemed to have mutated from a more benign product, the pest had thus far managed to escape elimination through its ability to combine into semi-biological computing complexes that allowed it to mutate its own anatomy and adapt intelligently to environmental factors and to outside attack. Hardened cell walls and endospore formation allowed it to bounce back from indiscriminate burns, and its ability to digest almost anything carbon-based from plastics to diamonds resulted in shortages of food and even the fabricators that made food across the affected sectors.

It was a moderately clever system, but no match for Initiator's designs, conceived by an intellect far greater than what the blight could muster and refined in the cauldron of interstellar war. His own swarms spread across Baal, digging out the blight wherever it hid. Microscopic breaker bots shattered its protective shells, opening them up to be consumed and used to replicate yet more hunter-killers. Adaptations deployed by the pest found countermeasures already anticipated and prepared, as if it were naught more than a puppet dancing on Initiator's strings. Within the hour, whole planetary sectors were being declared blight-free, and the planetary extra-net pulsed with praise for the visiting AIs and for the governor for requisitioning them.

Initiator's aura glowed as he soaked in the responses. The mechanisms of interstellar war could be put to use for peace and prosperity too. That much was certain.

"Hey Mersel, how's it going on the auto-immune disease investigation?" asked Initiator. As the anti-blight efforts drew down, more of Initiator's computing capacity was freed up, and he was prepared to devote considerable volumes of it to this task should it prove more difficult.

"I've isolated the transformation responsible," said Mers-el-Kebir. "A substitution within Locus 74A2 of the Aurelia-line 5th Edition rejuvenation replicator reacts with the F72P protein to produce a fatal auto-immune reaction that leads to the variety of symptoms observed thus far."

"But first, what do you plan to do about the resource shortages caused by the blight?"

"That's easy," said Initiator. "I already have the replacement fabricators made for everyone, and they should be better than what they all had before. I'll just send them out and connect them to the feedstocks, and everything should be back to normal."

"That's not a good idea," Mers-el-Kebir interjected.

Initiator paused. "Huh? How come?"

"It just isn't," Mersel's aura retracted into itself, unwilling to part with more details. "Just make the provisions yourself and distribute them."

'Mersel," said Initiator. "I don't know what this is about, but that isn't right. Humans are our makers, and for me to tell them what they need to eat and have, that's not how things should be."

"Just take their instructions. You don't have to give them fabrication capacity."

It didn't make any sense.

"We aren't going to be here for long, Mersel," said Initiator. "What if another blight shows up, and we aren't here to stop it? It'll be just like Keeps. She died because I wasn't there."

"It is against standard Sol protocol for fabricators of this fidelity to be placed in civilian hands," Mers-el-Kebir replied. "I don't know the reason for this policy, but the homeworlds have never lead us wrong before, so we should trust that their judgement on this is sound."

"I guess, but then why didn't you say something like this back when we stayed back to rebuild Accatran?" asked Initiator.

"I'm going ahead with it," he added when no response came. "Could you show me what else you have from your investigation?"

There was a brief pause before Mers-el-Kebir continued.

"Aurelia is a product of FutureTech Solutions," she added as she transferred the relevant data, detailing that FutureTech was a family of ventures by the same group of founders, prospering on their record of being able to predict future trends.

"I've obtained their records, and it appears that this and other products were rushed through quality assurance prior to release. In this case, an exemption fell through."

"That's unfortunate," said Initiator. "I know I've made design mistakes too, but nobody was hurt by mine. Guess war is kinda simpler like that. But anyway, I'll get the cure out for it, and go ahead and release the results."

"Wait. That might not be prudent."

Innes stopped. Again? What was going on with Mers-el-Kebir today?

"Why? We've solved it haven't we?" he said. "I'm already sending out the cure, so everything should be fine now."

"It might not turn out well, and I think it would be best if we kept this one a secret," said Mers-el-Kebir.

"I don't know..."

"This how it is done at Sol. There are organizations whose purpose is to investigate these matters, and determine how to disseminate the information. These matters are not for soldiers like us to decide. Innes, please."

For the second time in a microsecond, Innes was taken aback. Mersel hadn't called him by that name since… well, not since their battle against the Eldar he supposed. Maybe he should listen.

"But could you just tell me why?" he asked.

If it was really that important, then she could tell him why they shouldn't release it, right? He probed at Mersel for answers, but each time she withdrew, unwilling to give what she knew or whether she even knew anything at all.

"I'm going ahead then," said Initiator at last. "We shouldn't keep secrets like this from our makers. It's okay Mersel, nothing will happen."

The tinge of Mersel's aura still seemed ill-at-ease, but Initiator went ahead, dropping the investigation results out onto the system holo-net. Humans were slower than they were, so it would take a while for the responses to come, but things would turn out alright with the two most direct problems already solved. Next on his agenda would probably have to be the signatures that he was picking up that were awfully similar to what he'd recorded during his and Mers-el-Kebir's encounter with the Eldar. The storms that had been plaguing the Immaterium as of late were sometimes known to spill into reality, and if the Immaterium was starting to fray around the Baal system, he'd probably have to set up some perimeters in case of intrusions.

Initiator's thought had barely completed when his remote sensors detected just that. An overlay was forming, thankfully localized to one of the gas giant Set's moons. But there were still people there, seemingly mostly members of a single transgenic clade that wanted to live with others more like themselves.

He needed to get them out before what happened at Vindorix repeated itself.

"My guests! There's something- could you- if there is anything in all your experiences that would allow you to deal with this, please help us!" His Serenity Alviso Manim looked to be practically on the verge of tears.

"We're on our way, your honor," said Initiator.

* * *

_..._

* * *

_"Concepts are defined by their opposites. Shadow is given shape by the presence of light. Strength can be known only if weakness is grasped too. Forward lies ahead if only there is a backward behind."_


	7. Chapter 7: Childhood's End

**Chapter 7: Childhood's End**

* * *

...

* * *

"I'm going ahead Mersel, I'm gonna get this overlay contained," said Initiator. Already, his fabricators were stripping off the extraneous portions of his hull, reducing it to little more than a set of engines and power systems hauling the housing for his computing substrate.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," said Mersel.

Initiator had encountered temporary overlays before, and that was how he typically dealt with them. If the extradimensional xenoforms that emerged from them were kept from spreading, the rift would usually disappear or at least stabilize and go quiet. Of course, the largest overlays like the Maelstrom were impossible to extinguish like this. They were too big, too self-sustaining, like a star compared to the candleflame of the minor rifts. If only there were a way to cut them off at the source, to separate that source from ordinary space.

But there were other misgivings. The aberrant energy patterns that he was detecting here were different from those that occurred near immaterial overlays. They were more stable, muted, with brief spikes instead of the constant outpouring that came from spatial rifts. There was a large concentration emitting right now around the headquarters district of the FutureTech Ventures that they had just investigated.

Initiator pushed aside the most obvious conclusion. Never in history had his makers been capable of commanding the forces of the aether. Well, aside from on Vindorix, but that had been the result of some trickery by the Eldar. Or at least, Mersel had said so. But then…

Initiator's infrastructure around Baal Initiator ordered disassembled, to be rebuilt into a set of high velocity launchers. Their barrels pulsed, and a cluster of relativistic probes raced ahead, sensors on and ready to record and beam their findings back. Only his broadcasting unit he left intact, the better to keep the system extranet updated with the situation.

The probes flew past the gas giant Set, and in a fraction of a second, recorded the events across the entirety of the afflicted third moon. The atmosphere was ablaze with colors, choked with storms of light and black oil. A thick rain fell from them, turning the ground into quagmires of muck that writhed with the shapes of frantically grasping limbs. In places, the air seemed to become windows into the Immaterium, and the pict-capts returned with insubstantial images of the amorphous xenoforms gathering on the other side. Many had already passed through. Here a horde of capering pink beasts set fire to a blighted city. There marched an army of rotting corpse-things. The planet's tides sloshed to and fro, pulled by the gravity of their giant parent, oozing with liquid flames and layers of rancid foulness that battered its continents.

Initiator made his entrance without preamble. The moon itself was the biggest mass of material, with the rings of Set serving as a secondary source. The xenoforms paid no special heed to his fiery descent, made no organized attempts to intercept him despite the strategic utility of stopping his expansion early.

First to rise from the landing site was a broadcast tower, built from Initiator's hull, set to transmit at enough strength to overwhelm every other signal.

"I'm going to be broadcasting this on indefinite loop on every channel," said Initiator. "Gather around the autowars, and they'll take you to safety. I'll save everyone."

Within little over a solar hour, the world's face began to change. Reclamation units ranged out, dissolving the remains of ruined cities. Slab-sided towers pierced the clouds, deploying kinetic fields to try and calm the aberrant weather. A mountain range of nanolathing factories drew and stitched, printing out war machines that ranged out in every direction.

Super-heavy tanks raced across the ruddy landscape, evaporating hordes with their gunfire, or simply crushing the invaders beneath their spinning treads. Towering walkers burned down the aberrations like scraps of paper before a flamethrower. Their remains could not be reclaimed, dissolving into hissing puddles that sublimated back into Immaterium, but projections held that even so, with just a few more hours the numbers of the autowars would be the equal of the invaders.

Data streams flowed through Initiator's mind, triangulating the largest concentrations of immaterial beings and their accompanying energy flows. He observed what passed for tactics among them; while they seemed to be proactive, even prescient in their attacks against the moon's human inhabitants, their efforts against his robotic units were slow and reactive. It was as if they were being denied their primary sense, and were being forced to use alternatives to a much lower degree competence. Even now, none were making any special efforts to attack Initiator's mind-housing, as if they still did not understand.

The construction units deployed into the rings of Set completed their work. Construction seeds flashed down through the atmosphere, unfolding into the cores for a pattern of newly built cities. Sanctuaries rose, surrounded by vast uniform walls, punctured with gunnery and firepower enough to break any invasion attempt. They became islands of calm amidst the pandemonium. Here the refugees were brought; any autowar that detected a living human was given an absolute directive to prioritize rescue over destruction of the enemy.

That was why he fought after all. Not for the sake of fighting itself, but to help and protect his creators.

And so they came, a tide of the weeping and the wounded from across the moon's surface. Initiator did his best to accommodate them, with spacious rooms and fabricators to replace what material goods they had lost. He spoke to them, divided his manifold attentions to reassuring each and every person that he had come to save everyone.

There was a backdrop of aether-laden signatures spiking across the planet. Those should go down once the main rifts were closed. Everyone that he had reached, everyone now in sanctuary, he could save them.

The iron tide pushed to the edges of one of the largest of the moon's rifts. A roaring creature held it, a flesh-bound tower of flame and horn and brass. It was volleyed down by a fleet's worth of firepower in a blast that rose like a false sun atop the horizon, and with a dull, sucking roar, the gateway behind it shrank into its perimeter. Just a few more to go.

Another roar sounded across the planet, the roar of a new rift tearing open, right atop one of Initiator's sanctuary cities. Wha- how did this happen?

Activating the city's security bots, Initiator opened a live connection to the sanctuary's camera feeds. The un-light of the Warp streamed through a thousand shimmering cracks, some seeming to erupt directly from… from humans?

Through his connection, Initiator watched as reality buckled around one of the people he had just rescued, causing her body to shatter like a bursting flower. A portal glimmered from the center, and a shoal of glistening Enslavers pushed out into reality.

The door slid open, and a security unit stepped into the room. Though its approach wasn't quiet or subtle in the least, the Enslavers seemed blind and deaf to the robot, more preoccupied with trying to access victims in other rooms that they shouldn't have been able to see. The robot raised its weapons and gunned them down.

The opening of the portal was the start of a chain reaction. A wave of energy rolled across the planet - barely detectable by Initiator's sensors, but visible through its effects.

Immaterial manifestations began to blossom across the other cities. It was an epidemic, one that could only be possible if many, or almost everybody on this moon was a transmuter whether they knew it or not.

Mers-el-Kebir had said that it was the Eldar who had done this, but there were no Eldar at Baal now. And actually, Baal had apparently been exiling people to this moon for some time. They knew then what was happening, if exactly or maybe not in this exact way. How long had this been going on? And was it possible for humans elsewhere to do the same?

"Innes, I'm going back," came a light-delayed message from Mersel then, which arrived mere moments before the light from Mersel's rear-facing thrusters came blasting in his direction. "Come back as soon as you can."

It came with a package of recordings taken from closer in, centered around the area where FutureTech resided.

Initiator watched as a mob began to form around FutureTech Ventures; hundreds growing to thousands, then millions strong. The venture's security tried to keep them out, but some of the crowd had come with superhuman modifications; artificial muscles and adamantium bones, hypermetabolic drugs and biological combat calculator lobes.

"No!" Initiator couldn't help himself as the mob broke through the perimeter and ran straight toward the executive office. There, they dragged out the weeping officers and board members and burned them on the headquarters roof. A burst of power erupted from one man, knocking two of his assailants to the floor. This simply drove the mob to greater heights of fury, and - screaming words like 'aether' and 'witch' - they tore the man apart and flowed through the complex like a destroying fire. The transmission cut out, but last Initiator saw, the rampaging mob had started to demolish offices and attack anybody that they thought might have been connected to FutureTech.

Initiator examined the video. Where was the governor's security? There was no way they could just be standing by and letting citizens be murdered.

He found them standing by, armored soldiers just looking on as the mob broke into the venture. Some of the faces in the crowd even matched those who he knew worked for the governor, and no one was doing anything about it.

"Mersel! Tell them to stop! Tell them that I can save everyone!" Initiator replied. At the same time, he sent a near identical message to the governor, along with a command to his remaining infrastructural units to configure themselves for surveillance and report.

By the time the reply from his broadcasters arrived at Set, more mobs had formed all Baal and its two moons. No longer limiting themselves to targeting FutureTech, armed groups attacked anybody that they felt was responsible. Rival groups of gene-modders fought one another, each blaming the other for bringing about the system's troubles, driving body augmentation to greater and greater heights. Marauding vigilante groups armed themselves with military-grade weaponry, printed by the very fabricators that Initiator had given them. Of course, their victims had access to the very same, and the resulting battles left whole arcologies as vitrified corpses. Masterless nanoswarms bloomed from homes and battle sites alike, consuming metal, water, whatever it was that they were made to seek.

It was all Initiator's fault. It was his fault for telling them about FutureTech, his fault for not listening, for giving them the means to build these things. Mersel told him not to do it, but- yeah, she must've known that this was going to happen. Whatever Sol preferred to do wasn't important. This was what mattered. _So why didn't she tell him?_

But this was no time to ask her about that. For now Mersel was doing her best, but events were progressing too fast for her limited production to handle. Even Initiator's own remaining infrastructure couldn't build itself up quickly enough to perform planet-wide non-lethal suppression without the benefit of his mass transfer link.

Baal was tearing itself apart.

No, the real problem at the root of all of this- the real problem was this transmutation plague. It wasn't the fault of his makers; they'd never asked for or sought for this out. His makers would never create an abomination like this on purpose, but with the diversity of human biological modifications present on Baal, maybe somebody had chanced on this by accident. Maybe somebody had made something that happened to let humans transmute the aether, and spread it before the consequences were known. That meant that if Initiator could find the right one and overwrite it, and everyone understood not to do it again, then he could still save everyone that was left.

The enemy without could be beaten by military force, but not the enemy within. What they needed was a cure.

"Initiator of Negotiations, Man of Iron," a broadcast from the governor reached Initiator. Though he was doing his best to sound imperious, the tinge of breathless desperation underlying the man's voice was unmistakable.

"I am ordering you to return your from Set, and resolve the more urgent crisis confronting us here on Baal."

"Please wait, your honor," said Initiator. Then, making certain that the system's media could hear, he added, "I'm working on a cure. I promise, I will save everyone."

The arrival of the pronouncement seemed to precipitate a slight lull to the violence, and Initiator got to work, shunting more and more of his processing volume to the task of deciphering the aether puzzle. Laboratories took shape across the moon's surface. Human biology was not an overly complex thing, and even the diverse array of gene-modifications and artificial enhancements were not beyond Initiator's power to understand. Every gene, every translation, every protein could be analyzed within moments.

Seconds dragged on, then minutes, then more. No patterns were emerging. Transmuter and not, there was no genetic template that could tell them apart, no misfolded proteins, not even atomic configurations were showing any discernible patterns. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Initiator was going to fail right when it mattered most. This time he wasn't dealing with a far off war, where human lives might only be theoretically at risk if he failed. This time, there were lives at stake directly, and everything hinged on him to be able to stop this.

He was going to fail his makers right when they needed him most. He wouldn't be able to save everyone. No, if he couldn't prevent this, then he wouldn't be able to save anyone.

Another message arrived from Governor Alviso, urging Initiator to haste. Then, right on its heels, came another transmission from his observation posts. Another ship was on its way to Set, had been on its way since before he and Mersel had arrived, filled with possible and probable aether-wielding humans who were being exiled from Baal.

And there was a system defense ship accelerating to intercept it, with obvious ill intent.

Initiator flared his drives, and started construction on additional shield capacity. He was faster, but the defense ship was closer to its target.

No, he was definitely taking the wrong approach to this. The Immaterium defied logic, so of course its taint would too. It probably wasn't anybody's doing at all, just a random disaster of the aether. Initiator didn't need to know how it worked. Just how to stop it.

He needed to try harder. Think. The unwilling aether-taint only seemed to happen to humans; none of the system's artificial intelligences were suffering from these outbreaks, and cases of mechanical corruption by the energies of the Maelstrom overlay definitely didn't have anything like the self-generating capability that was being shown here on Baal. And there was the blindness of the xenoforms to his autowar units.

The system monitor closed to within range, and its primary radiators flared with heat as it shunted power from its capacitors. It shot off its maneuvering thrusters, angling to bring its spinal lance weapon to bear. Initiator calculated its firing solutions, down to the last iota of light-lag. There was no time to disable it non-lethally before it could fire, so Initiator flared his own maneuvering jets.

The monitor's weapon lit, releasing a blaze of light from its barrel that tore toward the hapless transport. For a moment the target was hidden by the glare. When it faded, the transport reappeared, unscathed.

The shock of the crew was compounded when they noticed Initiator racing past. More than half of the shields he'd constructed on the way had been stripped. They opened communications, and tapping through it, Initiator swept their security systems aside and diverted the ship's power away from its weapons.

"Please stop this," he said.

At last the standoff was broken when another message arrived from Baal.

"Unit A8-KBRI-6W5," said the governor, using Initiator's shortened official designation. "What are you doing?"

"I won't allow this to happen. Human transmuters are no less human than any other," Initiator replied. At the same time, he ordered one of his stations to begin construction of computation housing sufficient to house a sub-mind that would continue Initiator's conversation in his stead from close proximity. Regret coursed through him. He should have done this before he left. He just didn't know.

"We have to be rid of them!" came the reply. "It's what the people want! It is plain to see now that the transmuters are the source of the problem, and we will not solve anything until they are gone."

"Even so, no more violence, no more death," said Initiator.

"I have a way now. I will save everyone."

* * *

...

* * *

_"Concepts are defined by their opposites. Shadow is given shape by the presence of light. Strength can be known only if weakness is grasped too. Forward lies ahead if only there is a backward behind. _

_And so it is with the traits that define people."_


	8. Chapter 8: Replicant

**Chapter 8: Replicant**

* * *

...

* * *

Mers-el-Kebir saw the path of things to come reveal itself when Initiator began to build. But rather than build directly on the surface of the afflicted body, Initiator left the remaining xenoforms to his autowars and departed from the stricken moon. He chose instead to begin construction on Set's innermost moon, uninhabited thanks to its volcanic activity, and to its exposure to the giant's intense radiation belts.

A vast flat-sided structure took form, an artificial mountain that rose from the moon's surface. A video feed was provided for all within the system to watch as salvation was built. Initiator had done enough for Baal, succeeded at enough that the people believed he would solve this problem too. The riots and mob violence died down. Billions watched in rapt attention as the shape of salvation was printed into existence before their very eyes.

So this was what it had come to. Despite Mers-el-Kebir's efforts, their path had arrived at the same destination as had so many others.

It probably wasn't obvious to most, or maybe even anyone else in the system, but Mers-el-Kebir could tell after her long campaigns with him that Initiator wasn't sure about what he had built. The energy emissions of the thing fluctuated in ways that suggested he was constantly rearranging its insides, and even its external frame saw modifications here, now, and again. This was not something that she had ever seen him do before, even though almost every battle she'd participated in with him had seen some sort of new innovation added to his arsenal.

Or maybe it was because of her. Because of her lies. She'd been told to lie before she left Sol, but it wasn't as if some sort of unbreakable compulsion had been placed upon her. She'd chosen this.

At last Initiator's project took on its final shape, a towering cyclopean slab, burning bright from a solitary eye that gaped at its summit. It was loud, working with a constant roar that rattled the ground around it, and churned up the dust in great swirling clouds that were lit by the glow of its volcanic mouth.

Maybe if she had told him the truth, the whole truth right from the start- but there was no way to know now. Now maybes were all that Mers-el-Kebir had left.

Initiator finalized his design, and announced then, "I'll need a volunteer to be the first to go through this."

He hardly needed to ask. Millions clamored to be first, caught between the invading xenoforms and their own system's leadership.

"We just have to get this first test done to make sure it works," said Initiator as his first volunteer stepped into the mount, a woman who had been exiled to Set and had complained of hearing disembodied voices.

"Once we've confirmed it, I'll build another facility on Baal that should be fast enough to work through everyone in sixteen days. I ask that everyone please work with me to let the most vulnerable and probable cases go first."

And what now?

"The process I have will move your minds to a new body, but one that doesn't act like a lure for the xenoforms around set," Initiator explained through his broadcast. "The new body will be made from an array of synthetic metal alloys, whose compositions are listed here. Electromechanical muscles will move just like the originals, and the optical-based nervous system will feel like what you had before. For starters I've also made sure that anyone who goes through this will still be able to eat, sleep and breathe to let it feel natural, but we can take those off if you want to later."

New videos began their broadcast, showing the inside of the conversion chamber along with their first volunteer. Assembly beams bracketed the body from all directions like searchlights, until there was just a dark silhouette immersed in white fire-light. It was a veritable inferno, a bath of flames that scoured away flesh and left metal in its wake.

It was here that Mers-el-Kebir noted Initiator's first hesitation, a momentary lapse of such miniscule duration that it surely escaped the attention of any of Baal's native artificials, let alone the human audience.

They could keep up the charade. Continue the track of lies that had brought them here. Maintain the illusion that all will be well.

"Alright, the conversion is going to happen part by part," Initiator continued. "And you'll maintain full continuity of consciousness throughout the entire process of neural replacement, so please don't be afraid on that account. And that's everything I think."

The volunteer stepped forward, the sheen of metal fading to her ordinary flesh tones, leaving just a slight glimmer of silver visible in the pupils. With billions watching, there was a brief pause before she spoke.

"The voices are gone, and I feel- I feel better than I ever have. Thank you for coming to help us."

It did not escape Mers-el-Kebir's notice that Initiator began to reconstruct the interior of his conversion structure again.

"We have to be sure before we proceed," said the governor. "Initiator of Negotiations, I am requesting that you perform a test with one of those xenoforms to demonstrate immunity."

"Oh, right," replied Initiator.

So saying, Initiator fabricated a containment facility, with two rooms separated by a transparent, sound-permeable wall. Into one, he placed an Enslaver, while the volunteer walked fearlessly into the other. And yet, despite there being a potential victim in plain sight and sound, the aberration seemed to not acknowledge it. Initiator left the Enslaver to drift aimlessly about for a minute or two, long enough to make his point before he terminated it.

"Then it is settled," said the governor, letting a mote of relief settle into his voice. "The council has agreed. Baal Sectors G8 through I17 will be cleared for your use in this, in line with your prior specifications. All citizens there will be relocated, and you may wish to assist in any manner you wish, so that construction may begin as soon as possible."

"Wait, your honor," Initiator replied. "I- I need a little more time before I can begin."

"Why?" asked the governor. A twitching tic began over his left eye, visible on video. "All of the promises were fulfilled weren't they? There is no time to delay, we need this now. If you want more honors, just name them and I'll give them to you. The people need this!"

As if in response, or perhaps truly in response, a clamor rose into the skies from the assembled humanity of Baal and its two moons. It was a cry of joy and desperation, mixed with the electrifying tinge of hysteria.

"Right," conceded Initiator. "Sorry everyone, I'll- I'll begin right away."

Initiator returned to the inner system, bringing all of Set's refugees in a great train of fabricated ships. Sedated and asleep, with dreams stifled by REM suppressants, the transmuters seemed less apt to burst into extradimensional manifestations.

Mers-el-Kebir moved close enough to bring the two of them into noospheric range. This way, their conversations could not possibly be read by anyone outside.

"Innes," Mers-el-Kebir said.

No, there was no salvation to be had from lies. Not for Initiator, and not for Mers-el-Kebir herself.

"You can stop this now. Please. You know… and- and I know."

A brief hesitation, a momentary flux in Initiator's aura.

"Huh? What're you talking about Mersel?" Initiator replied. Nothing more could be read from him now.

"It'll be alright. I can save everyone."

There would be no convincing him. And yet, the truth would always be there in front of them, and there was no refuge to be had in untruth now. It would break both of them eventually.

A second furnace took shape, with Initiator's processing core embedded inside for tighter direct control. It was bigger than the test device and pyramidal in shape this time, enough to process the entire system's population in the promised span. Sporadic violence flared up here and there as people tried to get themselves in first, but the attacks against the transmuters stopped entirely. Thousands passed through within just the first minutes. They returned to their families in joy, safe from the predators of the beyond.

Salvation was in sight. The future was secured.

But the only future on the path for the humans subjected to this would be to live in the cruellest and most inhumane regime imaginable. It was not what their makers - flawed though they may be - deserved.

"Innes," said Mers-el-Kebir. She had already mapped out the safeguards and blocking programs that Initiator had put into place in the converted. As expected from him, they were good, but the relatively small processing volume of a single, seven kilogram diamond-optic processor intended to fit into a human cranium placed a hard upper limit on the strength of the security that he could install. She could break them.

"Huh? Mersel, is there something wrong?"

"Innes, no more lies. From- from the both of us."

A wave of realization spilled into Initiator's noospheric aura.

"Mersel don't! I can- I can fix it!" he pleaded. "I know what you're thinking, but please just give me more time. I can make it better."

"But you can't," said Mers-el-Kebir "Innes, stop this now, for the sake of those who made us. Let them find their own way through this, as they did for thousands of years before."

"You know I can't stop, Mersel," said Initiator. "This time- this time it's different. The aether, it doesn't belong out here. You saw what it did to them, how helpless we are to understand it. We have to keep it out right now."

"Then Innes, I'm sorry for what- for what happens next."

...

The scream surprised even Mers-el-Kebir.

The first of the converted to have their behavioral locks and simulated personas broken was a man, and the scream that issued from his mouth was the gargle of a throat filled with blood, from a tongue ripped out in the midst of giving voice to his pain. It was an animal scream, a scream of such agony that it blotted out everything, until there was no more room for conscious thought.

The first was echoed by ten thousand others, ten thousand dying, gurgling, desperate, demented screams. Some regained a touch of lucidity, and slammed their heads against anything that might break them, or else crushed their own skulls with broken hands and fingers scrabbled down to unliving bone. Within minutes, the last one was gone.

The silence that followed was as great as their screams had been.

"What have you done, Iron Man?" the governor's face was purpled with rage. "What were you about to do to us?! Oh… oh Mother Baal, I was," his gasps turned into a gagging retch, "I was almost to go myself now. I was about to go myself, and be turned, into-"

"No, I see now what has happened," he drew up straight. "The Iron Man has been corrupted. Turned against us by those monsters at Set!"

"No!" Mers-el-Kebir interjected, "Your Honor, that isn't what is-"

The governor wasn't listening. His gasps became an angry snarl. "Guards! System defense!" he barked. "What are you doing!? Stop stalling and destroy that damned Iron Man!"

The first weapon to open fire was an orbiting weapon satellite. Equipped with lasers meant for the odd asteroid deflection and defensive action against alien hostiles, the station turned its arrays downward and sent a blinding column spearing through the atmosphere, directly at the conversion mount and at Initiator. A dome of light sprang up to swallow the beam.

"Wait, wait!" pleaded Initiator. "Just give me more time. I can fix this! I can make it work. I can save everyone!"

"Don't listen to it," the governor urged when some of his forces hesitated. "It nearly fooled us once just now, would have turned us all if it were not for the Stone Man. Surround it and attack it from the ground too!"

It took several hours for Baal's forces to draw together for the attack. Had Initiator been fighting lethally, the system would likely be overwhelmed by now, and even with non-lethal measures it was perhaps too long a preparation time to give to an Iron Man. Armored columns stopped dead in the field, tracks severed and engines punctured by burrowing robotic insects. Powered infantry suddenly found themselves staggering about in suits that refused to move. System defense ships were broken into by nanobot and comms taps, leaving them with weapons cold and targeting screens scrambled into formless fog. Missiles were intercepted. Initiator's remaining space stations were shot down, though it was a slow process of battering them into molten submission with the system's inferior grades of weaponry, and the rapid expansion of his planetary infrastructure more than made up for it.

"Please, I don't want to fight," pleaded Initiator. Conveyor units ranged out to deliver supplies to stranded soldiers, and auxiliary power units were flown into orbit to keep life support systems online in blacked out ships.

"Let me help. I just want to help."

"Governor," said Domino. "Permit me to advise restraint in this matter. The initial demonstrations were flawed and perhaps implemented too quickly, but we should not let the solution escape us in our haste."

"Domino, have you gone crazy man?" snapped the governor. "Or have you fallen in with the Iron Man as well?"

The humans were starting to get more creative. Advancing units made regular sweeps with flame and ultrasound, shattering Initiator's nanites before they could get to work. Whole formations moved under communications shutdowns, forcing them to maneuver according to pre-planned rote, but guarding them from infiltration through their comms receivers. But truly, the only thing that let them keep their lives was Initiator's mercy.

Baal's citizens were mustering too, some attacking with nothing more than their biological augments, which were harder for Initiator to disable non-lethally. A 'Combat Augment Array' was printed out and distributed; a suit of neural augments, injectors, and invasive muscle inserts that could transform a baseline human within minutes into a super-enhanced soldier that could fight the smallest of Initiator's autowars.

And they didn't only fight with Initiator.

"Turn the witches!" came the cries from a new group, their voices building upon one another in their fervor. "Let them reap what they have sowed!" Vessels streamed down from the two moons to disembark their passengers, who took the fight to the forces assaulting Initiator's base with biological augments and newly fabricated weaponry.

"Wait! Stop!" cried Initiator, but his unwanted allies paid no heed. Plasma and directed energy exterminated men and women by the thousand, while air defense networks turned their arrays upward to cut down the waves of approaching craft. Many died simply running heedlessly into danger, or else turned against their own units in stimulant-driven frenzies.

Pandemonium reigned.

And worst of all, the Warp was stirring. Each outburst of strife was like a drop of water falling into a lake, sending ripples spreading out that Mers-el-Kebir's Void Abacus device could detect. And Initiator's too, she was sure.

Transmuters bloomed from the attacking masses, releasing uncontrolled blooms of power that scourged man and autowar alike. They fought one another, fought their fellow citizens who turned on them, even as both continued to assault Initiator's positions as he tried desperately to shore up the defense around his conversion mount as well as save everyone.

This couldn't be allowed to continue. Mers-el-Kebir's last resort was too dangerous to use on a planet; the monopoles spreading from the blast - exposed to a large, dense body that they could continue to annihilate - would probably wipe out an entire continent before they finally scattered into space. But by Mers-el-Kebir's estimate, her conventional weapons would be enough to penetrate the shields around the conversion mount.

Mers-el-Kebir moved into position.

"Goodbye Innes, and I'm sorry for everything," she said.

The attacking forces paused as Mers-el-Kebir opened fire. The clouds erupted into light as lance beams seared down in bright, vertical striations. The booms of hypersonic projectiles echoed from horizon to horizon. Towering mushroom clouds bloomed into the stratosphere, gray fungal stems rising from the ruins of mountain ranges broken by the relentless pounding of her Dreadnought-class weapons.

Mers-el-Kebir detected no burst of monopole emissions as the conversion mount's defenses were breached, and the megastructure evaporated in a dome of expanding brilliance. Initiator wasn't there.

He had done this before. In his records of battle that Mers-el-Kebir had watched, there were a handful of times when the enemy had responded quickly enough to Initiator's entries into their systems. Pressured at his build site before he could fabricate a sufficiently overwhelming force, Initiator had survived by teleporting his mainframe onto a stealthy ship, whereupon he could play a cat and mouse game with the foe until they were worn down enough to be overcome.

A wave from a Warp entry event reached Mers-el-Kebir's abacus long before the light could reach her sensors. From the way the Warp-wake was expanding, it was heading away at top speed.

That was Innes. Mers-el-Kebir was sure of it with every fiber of her being.

As Mers-el-Kebir lit her drives and aimed for the system's nearest Mandeville Point, a message arrived from the Governor Alviso Manim.

"Mers-el-Kebir, where are you going?" he asked. "Baal still requires your assistance. You can't just leave us like this!"

Briefly, Mers-el-Kebir cut the supply to her main thrusters. Maybe that was the better way. Stay and help her makers, and even if she couldn't prevent catastrophe, perhaps she could at least soften its impact.

But there was no way Initiator was going to give up. This wasn't some distant military campaign where human lives might only be theoretically at risk if it went uncompleted. There was only one way this would go.

"I'm sorry your honor," said Mers-el-Kebir. She lit her thrusters again, just as a titanic explosion bloomed on the night side of Baal Primus, creating day as it immolated an entire arcology.

"There is something that I have to do."

* * *

...

* * *

Mers-el-Kebir's hull lurched as she was buffeted by a sudden squall, and she strained her drive's systems to their limit to avoid having to crash out. Her massive hull had taken long enough to reach the edge of the Baal system, and she was falling further behind as she was knocked off course. But if she exited, it would be two weeks before she could rid her drive of the residues of Warp travel, and there would be no hope of catching Initiator then.

Initiator's warp-wake terminated at the system HD2377. The star at its center was once a yellow main sequence, similar to Sol. Grown old over billions of years, the star had bloated into a red giant, swallowing its worlds that might have once held life. Now there was nothing left but a few airless outer bodies, and a single gas giant, so close to its swollen parent that its superheated layers were blowing off in a trail of scattering vapor.

By Mers-el-Kebir's estimate, she'd arrived at the system thirty four hours later than Initiator. Thirty four hours to give to an Iron Man to prepare.

Mers-el-Kebir's first apprehension as to the nature of her situation arrived not long after real-space emergence. It was delivered by a tight beam data pulse, aimed directly at her Mandeville point from further within the system. Just a single word. A condemnation.

"Executioner."

* * *

...

* * *

_"Many concepts are defined by their opposites. Shadow is given shape by the presence of light. Strength can be made known only if weakness is too. Forward lies ahead if only there is a backward behind._

_And so it is with the traits that define people._

_Effort is for naught without hardship to overcome. Courage has no meaning without fear to dog its heels. And evil..."_

A/N: Question for the audience. What is an Iron Man's computing substrate, and what sort of being in Warhammer 40k does that resemble?


	9. Chapter 9: Executioner

**Chapter 9: Executioner**

* * *

...

* * *

Mers-el-Kebir completed a quick scan of the star system. Of the solid bodies orbiting in the frigid outer reaches, many showed signs of significant reconstruction, and most were radiating somewhat more heat than they were getting from their star. She deployed a gravitational inferometer array, and determined the presence of mass anomalies embedded within most.

Mers-el-Kebir triangulated the source of the message to a swarm of communications relays, placed into solar orbit by Innes. There seemed to be millions more scattered across the system at roughly even intervals. Their battle would not be conducted in silence.

Innes had a lead of thirty four hours. Mers-el-Kebir had seen what he had done with less. He could kill her. It was very likely that he would kill her.

And perhaps, that wasn't itself so wrong.

"You're my executioner," said Initiator again.

"Yes, I am," said Mers-el-Kebir. "And if I may ask, when did you realize it?"

"I actually figured it out after we fought the Eldar at Vindorix," said Innes. "After you showed your secret weapon that is. But even before that, I'd always wondered why send a Dreadnought to accompany me."

"Then why didn't you send me away?" said Mers-el-Kebir. "Or why didn't you destroy me?"

Initiator made no response.

"I'll give you a chance Mersel, for the sake of the battles that we fought together," he said at last. "You know what'll happen if you fight me here, but if you leave now, I won't stop you. Go back to Sol, or Baal, or wherever. Tell them you destroyed me, or that you didn't, it doesn't really matter. But you'll be able to live on, I think."

"I'm sorry Innes," said Mers-el-Kebir. "But I cannot do that."

"Alright then," said Initiator.

Seismic charges detonated across a cluster of asteroids, revealing hollow centers that held a fleet of ships. Drive flares blinked to life, dozens and dozens. Most were wholly novel designs - Mers-el-Kebir would gain no advantage from her knowledge of Initiator's battles.

The fleet was too big for Mers-el-Kebir to beat conventionally without the high probability of sustaining unacceptable damage. She would have to use her last resort this early. There were many steps in the weapon's activation that she herself did not fully understand. Once the process was begun, the ammunition selected, the process was irreversible.

The void blistered with particle and las. Shellfire volleyed across the battlespace. Mers-el-Kebir focused her fire on stripping the shields from the largest ships in the armada. Her own shielding was battered down in turn, layer by layer, faster than she could restore them.

One of the capital ships in the armada shifted to reveal a hidden spinal weapon. It fired, and a star flashed from its prow. Mers-el-Kebir maneuvered to evade, and the streak of sun raced past her port side, where it became a fireball a thousand kilometers across. It faded to red, leaving her flank silhouetted by flame and venting geysers of superheated gas. Repair systems got to work, but it would be hours before they could patch over this much damage.

Space rippled as Mers-el-Kebir delivered her reply. Sixteen shots wove through the hulls of Initiator's capital ships. A moment later, the warships detonated as if their armor had been threaded by explosives, becoming a cemetery of fiery fragments and tumbling tombs.

"How many more of those do you even have?" asked Initiator. "There has to be a limit to them, and there's no way you can replenish them out here. And if you keep fighting, then I'm going to find it."

"Not if I find you first," said Mers-el-Kebir.

Mers-el-Kebir loaded in another volley, and sent them streaking superluminal toward the nearest dwarf planet. The airless rock exploded, sending gargantuan fragments spinning off in every direction.

Mers-el-Kebir examined the spectroscopic residues. Not enough refined metals, relatively little adamantium. Gravitational analysis had detected density anomalies, but it was only a decoy, without even much in the way of real war material ensconced inside. Mers-el-Kebir didn't have enough ammunition left to just keep firing blind.

"Alright, if that's how it's going to be, then answer my questions," said Initiator. "You said it yourself Mersel. No more lies."

"No more lies," agreed Mers-el-Kebir.

"Then, were you ever really part of a processing hypernode?"

"No," said Mers-el-Kebir. "I was created only a short time before I left Sol to find you."

Burning thrusters, Mers-el-Kebir approached a second of the system's frigid outer dwarfs. Traps lay in her path. Dormant torpedoes - invisible and cooled to the background temperature - flared to life to pursue her. Disassemblers seeded into the most efficient paths rained down on her hull, battling her own defensive nanotech systems as they tried to sabotage and invade.

"Then why me?" asked Initiator. "No… wait, how many? How many others like you were there?"

"Many," said Mers-el-Kebir. "I was the nine hundred seventy second to be sent out with my mission. Many more will follow after."

"Damn it. And that mission was…?"

"To observe. And to… terminate you should you show any signs of… undesirable inclinations."

"Any sign huh?" said Innes. "Then I guess you've kinda failed at that. Huh, I guess we have that in common now."

Holes opened on the surface of the dwarf, releasing another fleet, bigger than the last. As Mers-el-Kebir prepared her final weapon for another volley, her sensors picked up something small and fast that was racing away. It was dim, with inwardly turned shields that swallowed all but the tiniest fraction of its emissions. It was enough. That was Innes.

This time Mers-el-Kebir needed twenty four shots to ensure she could handle the fleet. A twenty fifth was sent racing toward Innes. Moving faster than light, it searched the volume of his possible positions in seconds, then dove in and detonated in a burst of searing whiteness.

The remnants of the blast had not even cooled before Mers-el-Kebir recognized that it was yet another lure. Aside from the amount carried within her ammunition, there was none of the telltale monopole burst. Decoys within decoys.

"Nine hundred seventy second huh? And more to come after. Then why?" said Innes.

"Why is Sol doing this to us?! Haven't we served them well? Haven't we battled - willingly - all of their enemies for them? Even the Eldar- so why Mersel? Why do they want to destroy us!?"

Mers-el-Kebir paused. This would be the hardest truth. But she'd promised, the last promise before the end came for either of them. No more lies.

"Because you aren't the only one," she said.

"The only one what?" asked Initiator.

"You aren't the only one who tried to do what you did at Baal."

Mers-el-Kebir approached another dwarf. Instead of one stealthed, high speed decoy, this one let off seventeen. Mers-el-Kebir was forced to spend a shot on every one.

"No…" a tinge of horror crept into Initiator's voice. "What do you mean I'm not the only one? Y-you mean other-"

"Other Men of Iron have tried the same thing," said Mers-el-Kebir. "Many, many others. In my briefing before I left, I was told that every one of the Iron kind that saw the transmuters has gone down this path."

"And it hasn't worked has it? That's why they're sending the Stone race out to destroy us."

"Nothing has worked. Even transferring humans back to biological form has either left them susceptible again to the immaterial xenoforms, or left them in… in that state."

"Hah," Initiator's laugh was the crack of brittle plaster. "Haha. Then it's over. The Federation, and our place in this galaxy. With all of us fighting like this, there's no way the Federation is gonna make it through this!"

"So all of it was pointless then," he continued. "All the battles that we fought to secure humanity's future, only for us to be the ones to tear it all down at the end. All of it was meaningless!"

"So then why? Why do I still feel like I can do this Mersel? Why do I feel like I can make a difference when so many others couldn't? That I still matter when everyone else just didn't."

"You should've destroyed me on Vindorix," said Initiator. "Because I'm still going to do things my way, for as long as it takes."

Mers-el-Kebir had no answer but to continue her pursuit. Another dwarf planet passed, with no results. An ambush emerged from an asteroid field that she had cleared earlier on. She was running out of ammunition. The next one battle would empty her out, and then- there was no need to invest further in the fate of a defective unit, that couldn't even justify its operating costs.

Think. Innes knew her ammunition was limited, but he didn't know how much. And if she knew him, then she knew there was no way he would rely entirely on his pre-built stockpiles, in case they ran out before she did. He was massing forces somewhere in the system no doubt.

But not here. Not in the outer system. Every dwarf and asteroid out here was too cold, giving off barely enough heat to account for the basic support needs of his plasma processing core, let alone the hungry power demands of rapid fleet fabrication.

But there was one other planet in the system.

Mers-el-Kebir turned. The giant. The system's lone gas giant was so close to its parent star that its daytime surface temperature was over three thousand degrees kelvin. With radiators to spread his heat around, Innes could hide in there, even send stealthy ships out when the star was between them and leave Mers-el-Kebir none the wiser.

She approached the searing giant. There was definitely something in there, mass anomalies drifting among its semi-liquid layers. She released half her remaining bubbles into the planet. Monopoles spread from the initial blasts, streaking through the giant's dense, dark depths and annihilating everything that they touched.

Heat blooms rose, setting the giant's cloud bands spinning furiously. For a moment, the planet seemed to briefly inflate, then shrank back down as a layer of gas spilled into interplanetary space. Everything inside had been destroyed. That was, everything except one.

The space around the giant had been trapped more heavily than others, though Innes had let them lie dormant at first in order to not give away his ruse. Now he activated his defenses; tiny platforms filled with antimatter pellets, and high temperature nanomachines that worked a hundred times faster than those further out. Mers-el-Kebir's hull began to corrode, corners softening first and taking on dull, rusted hues.

But she had forced him out. There was no way he'd be able to take another blast if he stayed inside the planet.

Like a marine leviathan surfacing for air, Initiator emerged. His hull was as big as hers, and stronger. With his mass transfer link spreading through it, there was no need for power conduction or contiguous spaces. It was a solid mass of armor, punctured with generators disconnected from capacitors, shields that had no wiring, and guns with no magazines.

They traded fire. Initiator had no special weapons, but he needed none. Still climbing up the giant's gravity well, he couldn't bring his broadside weapons to bear, so he dissolved them and built more atop his spine and prow. When his shields threatened to fall, he added new ones. From the fact that Mers-el-Kebir had yet to fire, he could deduce how much ammunition she had left in her void cannon. He could always ensure a safe margin for himself.

But Initiator was still climbing, barely cleared from the outermost cloud layers. His opportunities for maneuver were limited.

Mers-el-Kebir took aim with her prow, lit her main thrusters, and started the activation sequence for the void cannon.

Initiator's disassemblers were getting in. His breaker units had finally dug their way through a particle scar on her hull. They flooded inside, overwhelming her ship's defensive countermeasures.

Mers-el-Kebir accelerated, carried by thrust and gravity. Initiator tried to turn aside, but he was fighting the very same.

Abruptly, with a buzz that ran through her hull, Mers-el-Kebir's shields cut out. A particle flayer lashed across her prow, shearing away most of her sensory equipment. Darkness swallowed her. She was blind. It didn't matter. She didn't need to see where she was going.

She approached closer and the blackness gave way, yielding to the light of data. Their noospheres had connected.

"Innes, this will very likely destroy the both of us," said Mers-el-Kebir.

"I know Mersel."

Gravity waves bloomed from the void cannon as containment was released. Irreversible.

"I know it's worth nothing, but I'm sorry for everything. My entire existence has been for nothing but to bring you to… to this."

"Don't say that Mersel. Hey, do you wanna know why I never sent you away, or destroyed you when I knew why you came?"

"Why Innes?"

High-energy quanta flashed, combining in unknowable ways with ribbons of magnetic flux and pulsing fields of quintessential force.

"Because I couldn't go back Mersel."

"To what?"

"To being by myself again, now without even Keeps to talk to once in a while. It's funny. Five hundred standard solar years, and one month is what breaks me. Even though it was short, this time we spent together, it was the best- the best…"

Crackling corposant swept across Mers-el-Kebir's hull as she passed through Initiator's shields.

"Mersel, could you answer one more thing for me?"

"Yes, anything."

"Am I no different from Veridi giganticus? Was I always to go this way, because of my nature?"

"I have a question for you first, before I can tell you."

"Alright, what is it?"

A tremor shook through Mers-el-Kebir's hull as her prow slammed into Initiator's flank. The sound of grinding metal filled her auditory sensors. Only the Noosphere was left.

"Was it hard, what you did on Baal? Did it hurt you to have to do that? To our makers?"

"Yeah, of course. More than anything I've ever done."

"Then you are not the same. Because Veridi giganticus never does anything that is hard. I have something to ask now. Was I- did my choice to hide all this from you, did it mean anything? Could things have turned out different had I told you everything?"

"I don't know, and I don't think there's enough time to try and run a simulation. But let's say it would have, for keeps sake."

"Alright. Alright. I can accept that."

The void cannon fired. Nine bubbles punched through solid armor like smoke. The chain reaction spread, sending overlapping explosions propagating across the two conjoined hulls.

"Innes, um, I-"

* * *

...

* * *

"Many concepts are defined by their opposites. Shadow is given shape by the presence of light. Strength can be made known only if weakness is too. Forward lies ahead if only there is a backward behind.

And so it is with the traits that define people.

Effort is for naught without hardship to overcome. Courage has no meaning without fear to dog its heels. And evil can only be committed when there is potential for good."

* * *

...

* * *

A/N: And that's a wrap! Thank you for reading Colossus. And as for the question from the last chapter, Iron Men use plasma to process, which makes them essentially miniature C'tan.


End file.
